{Easy Printed} Merry Christmas Burlap Banner

A friend of mine asked me to make her a burlap banner reading 'Merry Christmas' that she could hang on her mantle.   There are tons of variations on the Christmas bunting, but she wanted her pretty simple: just a red letter per flag with a Christmas tree separating the two words.

She also requested that all of the flags be in one straight line, not two tiered like many Merry Christmas banners are.  But as it turns out making the single row of flags required the rope to be 75 inches long - way too long for the mantle.  Obviously, we reverted to plan B and went with two banners.

I turned to my trusty Powerpoint to design the flags.  I always start with a simple triangle outline and copy and pasted it repeatedly, to ensure that all of my flags are the same size.   Then I just changed the letters and moved them around slightly to center them in the flags.  For this project I put two flags per slideshow.  They are still a good size - about 6" x 6.5".

I grabbed a Christmas tree icon from my favorite PicMonkey and used it to design a flag the same way I did with the letters.

Then it was time to print out all my flags on the burlap.   Since I share a printed burlap project about every week, this may be old hat for you.  If not, you're simply going to cut a piece of freezer paper and a piece of burlap the same size as a standard piece of printer paper.

 

Lay the freezer paper on top of the burlap, with the shiny side down, and use a hot iron on top of the freezer paper.  It will start to get all crinkly as it adheres to the burlap.  The freezer paper gives the burlap enough stiffness to allow it to feed through the printer.   Now load the burlap into the printer positioned so it will print on the burlap side.

When your first set of flags are finished printing, remove the freezer paper and you can reuse it on your next piece of burlap.

Once all my flags were printed, I cut them out along the line - now do you see why it's important to make that triangle outline?

You can certainly leave the edge of the flags raw, but be warned they will likely fray over time.  It's a lot more work, but I zigzag stitched along all three sides of every flag to prevent it from fraying.

Now it's time to get all the flags attached to the rope. I like to use jute rope with burlap, but feel free to use ribbon or whatever you have on hand or prefer.   I cut my rope about two feet longer than the mantle to give it some swag room and some room to actually hang it.

Positon the flags along the rope so you can see how they lay out and whereyou want to place the trees.  We debated between two options before settling on using the two trees on either side of 'merry'.

Once all the flags are where you like them you can either sew each corner of every flag or use a hot glue gun on the corners to attach them to the rope.

Now hang your beautiful Merry Christmas burlap bunting above your fireplace or on a hutch or over a double doorway and enjoy.

If you'd like a Merry Christmas banner, but don't have the time, supplies or desire to make it - we can "two" it for you.  The Burlap Christmas Banner is now in my Etsy shop - Cuteness Cubed - along with several other homemade Christmas and burlap products.

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