A Beadboard Garland for Fall

Saturday, September 24, 2011

A Beadboard Garland for Fall

Posted by Mr. Technology at 6:41 AM

I love the look of beadboard, and I’ve been using it for signs for months now (you can see some here), …but I also love the look of pennant banners, so I thought, “How about a beadboard pennant banner?”

Why not?

The first step is to draw out your pennants. There is no magic formula here, just do whatever looks good to you. My pennants are 7” long, and 5” wide at the top. I marked the top and bottom at 5” intervals, except I started the markings on the bottom after coming in 2.5” (because that’s half of 5). Then I just had to connect the dots!

Once my lines were all drawn, I used a table saw to cut along the lines. Note: You could also use a jigsaw if you don’t have a table saw!

Once you get the first piece off, you can use a fence to cut your parallelograms easily…

…but that’s not going to help when it’s time to cut the triangles off!

I ended up with ten little triangles. Rather than drill each triangle separately, I stacked them and clamped them together. Then I could drill five at once! This is a great time saver.

I base-coated all my triangles with Rustoleum Heirloom White spraypaint, but then I decided to get further color inspiration from candy corn! I used acrylic craft paint, and didn’t even worry about getting lines perfect or anything. Have you ever seen a perfect candy corn?? Another Note: OK, so now I know that candy corns are actually yellow-orange-white and not orange-yellow-white. Sorry! I don’t actually eat them! Bleah.

I used black acrylic paint to stencil on letters…

…and the next day I distressed and glazed all my little pennants.

I tied the pieces together with twine, and anxiously hung my banner on my buffet so I could admire my handiwork!

Whoops!

***blush***

Oh, that’s much better!

I like the little-bit-faded look the pennants have.

No tricks for me….just treats, please!

Want some other ideas for an Autumn banner? Well, how about a banner that just says “autumn”? The one below was actually the first one I made. For this one, I use vinyl as a “reverse stencil,” and sprayed the pennants with Rustoleum Summer Squash paint. You may notice that these triangles are all equilateral, so you can make any size/shape triangles you like!