If you haven’t been following me here or on social media then you may have missed some of my hints that my son is having a Dinosaur themed birthday party this year. This is something I’m having tons of fun with and have been enjoying making crafts for his party. The first craft I chose to tackle was his Dinosaur Fossil Birthday Banner.
When I first started planning for his birthday I thought I would just use my banner template from last year (which can be found here), but then I saw this cute design in Cricut Design Space™. This design does cost money, but if you have their Cricut Access membership it won’t cost you anything extra.
Making the Dinosaur Fossil Banner
Making the Banner was a lot easier than I expected. I was pretty nervous and scared because I completely messed up a trial project before this and was terrified that I would mess this project up as well. The program will recommend you use the Standard mat (green mat),but unless yours is a broken in and less sticky mat I’d recommend you using the Light mat (the light blue mat).
If you have multiple mats then you can prep all pages at once which will cut back on time making the project, but if you are like me and only have one mat to use you’ll need to do everything step by step.
What you’ll need:
- 2 12×12 White cardstock
- 1 12×12 Black cardstock
- String
- 2 Blue Cricut Mats
If you do the basic “Happy Birthday Banner you will need all of the above, but if you also choose to make a banner with your child’s name on it like I did then you will need double the supplies so that you can make a second banner.
Step 1
Set out all of your supplies and prep your first mat with a sheet of white cardstock.
Step 2
Load your sheet and follow the prompts on Design Space. You will start cutting and then unload the mat.
Step 3
Weed the mat and reveal your dinosaur head and banner pieces. Once the excess has been removed I recommend using your spatula to help ease the cardstock from the mat. Doing this will help ensure that you don’t have curled cardstock after removal. (I learned this the hard way.)
Step 4
Repeat steps one through three with a second piece of white cardstock. This will contain the dinosaur tail and the rest of your banner pieces.
Step 5
You are going to repeat steps one through three again, but this time you will be using your black cardstock. If you want to you can cut off some of the excess paper. I would do this if you plan on using the scraps for other projects. Weeding the Black is a little more detailed as you are weeding each individual letter.
Step 6 (optional)
If you want to make a second banner with your child’s name on it you will need to cancel the project and then click customize. Once here you will have to edit it to have each individual letter in your child’s name instead of having the project say “happy birthday”. This took me a couple of minutes to do. You also will want to count the banner pieces and delete any unnecessary pieces.
Step 7 (optional)
Cut and weed your new project just as you did with it the first project. I was able to only need to cut one sheet of white and half of a sheet of black.
Step 8
Assembly. The holes cut into this banner are quite small so you will need a thin string to assemble the banner with. I used fishing line. Lay out all of your pieces in order to get an idea of how long you need your string. Don’t forget to glue the letters on. I went the simple route and used a glue stick.
Step 9
Cut your piece of string and begin sliding the banner pieces on in order. Make sure you are putting everything on from left to right so that people can read it when you hang the banner at their birthday party.
And with that you have a complete pre-historic birthday banner!!
