Baby Birthday Banner {Tutorial}

It was my nephew's first birthday last week! And we threw him a mustache bash. I'll be sharing all of the stashy details soon enough. First up, this super cute baby face birthday banner. I got the idea from Stephanie over at Simply Radiant. 

I made two banners celebrating my nephew's adorably expressive face throughout his first year. And I absolutely love how they turned out. Some party goers thought they were really cute, some thought they  were a wee bit "creepy", but one thing's for sure they made everyone smile. My aunt even kept one of the banners to hang in her cubicle at work.

What you'll need for your own baby face birthday banner:

• 8-9 baby faces printed on card stock
• patterned card stock in several colors
• double-stick tape
• scissors
• tissue paper
• ribbon

Select several photos of the birthday boy/girl on your computer and crop them down to just their little heads. The more varied facial expressions the better: big smiles, grins, yawns, sad faces, etc.

Change the color of the photos to black and white. You can make the faces as big as you'd like, but I decided to fit two per page. Print them out on card stock.

UPDATE: I had someone ask how I cropped down the photos. I claim to be no technological mastermind but here's what I did:

There are a lot of different ways to do it and programs to use. But here's what I considered to be the easiest (hence what I did):

1. Find the photo saved on your computer that you want to use. Right click on it and open with Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

2. In office picture manager, go to the top bar and click on --> Picture then in the drop down menu --> Color.

3. On the right side bar you'll see three sliding bars: Amount, Hue, and Saturation. Slide the saturation all the way to the left (-100%) to make the photo black and white.

4. Go back to the Picture drop down menu and click --> Crop. Then just crop close enough to the head (you'll be cutting around the face later). Most of my faces were about 4 inches wide and 5 inches long. But they don't have to all be be exactly the same size.

5. Save the cropped black and white image. I then just imported two cropped heads per page in Word (landscape orientation) and then printed them off. :)

Most of my photos that I started with were very large image files from my Canon camera. So when I cropped them down to just the head they were still very clear. I also used a couple of my sister's Facebook photos which are going to be less quality and little blurry once cropped, but I was fine with it.

Cut around each face. I left card stock on top of the heads to support the party hats.

Cut triangles out of patterned card stock for the party hats and secure on each head with double-stick tape.

To make the fringe for the party hats, start with three strips of tissue paper the width of the faces and about two inches long.

Stack the three pieces of tissue paper on top of each other and cut towards the middle all the way down to create fringe.

Cut down the other side as well, make sure to leave some space down the center.

Run some double-stick tape along the bottom of the party hat. 

Now grab each end of the fringed tissue and twist a few times before pressing to the double-stick tape. Fluff up the fringe and trim any crazy stray fringe pieces.

Once all faces have been hatted and fringed, string them up with ribbon. I used two rows of ribbon taped behind the faces and the hats.

I'm sharing this baby face banner over at I Heart Naptime, My Girlish Whims, The DIY Dreamer, Uncommon Designs, 52 Mantels, A Glimpse Inside, Whipperberry, 5 Days 5 Ways, The Chicken Chick.