Apparently burlap banners have become a trendy must-have for various celebrations, including baby showers. Unfortunately I was unaware of top banner trends, so I turned to Pinterest for inspiration.

With easy instructions found on Pinterest and a list of supplies, I was off to my local Michael’s, a Dallas area craft store.

Materials Needed:
B&W Printer & Paper – to print off the Letters for the banner
Fabric Paint – I selected Navy for this project
Scissors
X-acto Knife
Stencil brush
Blue Painter’s tape
Twine
Burlap fabric
Clear Nail polish

First up, figure out how large each burlap piece should be.
When considering the size, you must take into account how many letters are needed and the size of the wall the banner will hang.  If the letters are too big the banner will look horsey. Too small and it will get lost on the wall. After testing out a couple of sizes, I landed on 6″ w x 8″ h rectangles.

Next is creating your stencil. You can always opt for pre-cut stencil letters at your local craft store but since I have access to a printer. I made my own.

With the aid of my cat Trinity and my computer, I designed the letters using Adobe Illustrator. I created a 6″ x 8″ black key-lined box and inserted a letter in the center as large as it would go and still look nice.  For my chosen font I used Palatino and the size of each letter was 450pts.

Each letter should be printed on a separate piece of paper. Cut around each letter very carefully, avoid cutting into the white areas. Finally cut out your box’s outline. The remaining white portion is the stencil.

Place the stencils on the burlap, arranging far enough apart so the squares do not overlap. Use a pencil to outline each square. This will serve as a cutting guide for the squares once the paint has dried.

Tape the stencils down securely. You don’t want anything to move around once you start.

Grab your stipple brush and start dabbing the paint on the letters. I chose to remove the tape shortly after I was done allowing the letters to dry fully over the balance of the afternoon.

Once all the letters were completely dry, I started to cut the squares, following the pencil lines. Unexpectedly the burlap started to fray as I cut, not good.

Apparently working with burlap has a downside and before I could continue with the project I had to find a solve for the banner that was unraveling before my eyes.

The “fix” for frayed edges depends on who you ask and what you find online.
With the craft store closed, I opted for clear nail polish.  The nail polish dries slightly darker than the raw burlap so I created a half inch border on all sides so it would look intentional.

After the nail polish borders dried it was time to add the twine/string. To make the twine easier to thread, I used a large “eyed” needle to guide the twine through each square. The weave on burlap is pretty open so adding the twine was a quick process.

I’m very happy with how the banner turned out.
Success!