Birthday Photo Banner

For my son's first birthday, I wanted to display photos of him from Month 0- Month 12.  As I Googled ideas for this, I came across the cutest birthday photo banners!  I decided to make my own and this was my process:






1. Select a photo for each month you want represented.  I ended up with 12 pictures, ranging from newborn to 11 months.

2. Crop each picture to a perfect square.

3.  Re-size your photo (again) to a 4x6.  However, 1/3 of the photo should be white.  Save and print at your desired location.

4x6 Print, 4x4 image.

4. Cut the white strip off of the photo, leaving you with a square.

5.  Gather paper for your background squares.  I used scrapbook paper in complementary colors/prints. 

6. Cut paper squares into 4.5x4.5 and 5x5 inch squares.  I used solid colors for the larger squares and a pattern for the smaller squares.  My plan was to alternate colors every other photo. 

7. Heat up your glue gun!  Glue your three pieces together (5'', 4.5'', 4'' photo).  Make sure to keep everything centered =]

8.  Use a hole puncher in the top corners of each photo square. 

9. Weave hemp string through the holes and arrange the spacing between your squares.

10. (optional) I wanted to put month labels on the corners of my squares, so I used Microsoft Word to create 1'' circles with "# months" typed inside.  I printed them and glued them onto circles of leftover scrapbook paper, just slightly bigger than the 1'' circles. I hand cut one circle until it was the right size, then traced it for the remaining 11 circles. I'm awful at drawing circles!

 

Now you should have a completed banner! 

Please let me know if you try this and how it turns out =]