Create a magical mood anywhere with these party-perfect banners made out of ordinary catalogs! Just fold, cut, and tape for uniquely beautiful banners that look like a million bucks. Party Banners are ready to hang in minutes, and so good-looking you may never want to take them down. Make them full- or half-size, in any of the nine styles shown below. Or make up your own! And you can easily personalize or add other decoration with markers.

Party Banners are so simple to make. The catalog does most of the work for you: it comes conveniently pre-folded, colorfully decorated, and cut to just the right size for banners. It even gets itself delivered to your house! With all that out of the way, you get the fun part. Your friends won’t believe your awesome party decor started out as junk mail!

• Made from a catalog

• Needs just scissors, tape or stapler, and string

• Kids can help

• SO fast to make

• Left-handed directions below!

Steps At a Glance:

Ready? Here’s how:

1

You’ll need:

• a catalog

• tape, double-sided tape, glue stick, or a stapler

• scissors

• string

2

Cut about a 5-foot length of string and tie a loop at each end.

3

Take the staples out of the catalog. You can pry the ends up from the inside with a coin.

Take one whole, closed page with the fold on the left.

4

Fold the page in half from bottom to top, then in half again from bottom to top.

Trim about 1/4” from the top edge through all the layers.

5

The folded edges are at the bottom and the left of this rectangle. This is important for the banners to come out right.

Let’s cut this in the One Point style, like so. There’s no wrong way to cut it, just cut diagonally from the fold up to the opposite side.

6

Open up and see your two banners.

7

Open one of your banners. Lay your prepared string in the fold. Put some glue stick, double-sided tape, or regular tape folded around sticky-side-out (like here) at each corner, leaving space for the string.

Close up the banner and press to adhere. Or, staple the corners leaving space for the string.

Repeat until your string is full, then hang from pushpins and enjoy!

and try this:

Left-handed Directions

• Have the fold on the right in step 3.

• Keep the folded edges of your page at the bottom and to the right when cutting the banner shape.

• Cut the shape part on the left end of your rectangle instead of the right.

Different Shapes

Here’s a bunch of shapes that are easy to cut by eye. In each of the pictures the folded and cut page is shown at the top, and the bottom is the banner opened up.

Remember the folded edges need to be at the bottom and to the left.

You can try cutting these at steeper or flatter angles, or make up your own variations. You can’t go wrong - they will all look beautiful!

Lettered or Bordered Banners

Use broad-tipped markers to add letters and/or borders to your banners. Spell out a name, date, or other message!

You can spread your message out over two or more banners, too, like here.

Mini Banners

These smaller banners fit anywhere - even into an envelope so you can mail the party to a friend (See the size comparison in the last image).

You make these the same way as the full-size, except you start with a half-page. It’s usually easy to tear half a page right out of the catalog. Or tear a whole page in half.

With the half-page widthwise, fold it closed like a book. Then continue from step 4, above.

Thank you for reading! If you have questions, please drop me a line.