Weddingbee Blog

What did I do over the weekend? I made this thing:

You might be saying, “What the heck is this for?” Well, a while back I mentioned that I most definitely will be having a candy buffet at my wedding. And in almost all of the inspiration photos I’ve saved, the candy buffet has this super awesome banner.

Image from C.R.A.F.T.

So I said to myself, “I have to have a banner.” And now, I do! And you can too with the following relatively easy, but not-so-quick, steps!

What you need:

• Hearts! I found this pack of 10 cardboard-like hearts at Michaels for a few dollars. I bought two packs (you will make mistakes).
• Paint. I just buy the cheap acrylic paint at Michaels. I’ve never had any problems with it. You may also want some glitter-paint. I used Martha Stewart, and to be completely honest, it’s not that great. I won’t buy it again.
• Paint brushes. I like the big foam ones for painting bigger stuff. They were on sale for seven cents each! You may want a small one too for touch-ups.
• Cylindrical sponge for making dots. They sell packs of foam dot-makers right next to the paintbrushes. I didn’t buy them because it was five bucks for four! I don’t need four. So I bought this little sponge roller and took the roller part off. Worked like a charm.
• Glue or Mod Podge. I bought the Mod Podge because the opening was the perfect size for dipping my dot sponge in it. That’s called thinking ahead.
• GLITTER!!!! I recommend the fine glitter, because I think it’s a little classier than the chunky glitter (as if my banner is classy in any way…whatever.)
• Lots of paper to put under your work. I sacrificed an entire magazine, page by page.
• Some kind of cord to hang your work on (not pictured)
• Tiny clothespins for hanging (not pictured)
• Clear sealant spray (not pictured because I don’t have it yet! But you’ll definitely need it.)

Estimated Time Needed to Complete this Project: Forever…But seriously, this took waaaaaay longer than I thought it would. A simple painted hearts banner might take a couple of hours. Multiple colors plus glitter means more than a day.

Now that you’ve got all your materials together, let’s begin. I started by painting each heart. This step is obviously more or less time-consuming depending on how many colors you’ve decided to use.

You like my totally staged photo? The heart is already painted and there’s no paint on the brush. Oh well. This is kind of what it looked like.

The next step for me was to paint each heart with a layer of glitter paint. Full disclosure: I originally thought I would just put glitter paint on each heart, but the glitter paint just wasn’t sparkly enough. But I wasn’t about to spend hours painting new hearts. So I got a double-dose of glitter. In the end, I like the extra sparkle. But for the extra effort…probably not worth it.

If you choose to glitter paint, then the next step is to wait about 24 hours before you attempt the big time glitter. Otherwise, the glitter sticks to the paint and you end up with this:

Fail.

When you’re ready for the dots, take a single sheet of paper and fold it in half, hamburger style, then reopen it. This is to catch your excess glitter and allows you to pour it back into the container. Set the paper aside. You don’t want to get glue on it.

Back at the hearts, dip your dot sponge into the glue and dab polka dots on your heart. Only do one heart at a time!

Place the heart on the folded paper and pour glitter over the glue polka dots. Then, pour all that extra glitter onto your catch paper. You may still see some glitter on the places where you don’t want glitter. Hold the heart glitter-side down over your catch paper and tap the back of the heart. (If this doesn’t work, I recommend rolling up a piece of scotch tape and using it to pick up the excess that won’t come off.)

Not staged. This is an action shot.

Now comes the hard part…getting the glitter back into its container. Use the paper kind of like a funnel and just pour the glitter back in. You can do it! I don’t have a picture, but I hope you get the idea.

The final step is spraying each heart with clear sealant to keep the glitter from getting all over everything that’s near it. I haven’t done this yet, so our apartment looks a bit like Mr. Whale and I live with fairies. (You definitely want the sealant.)

Now you just have to decide how to hang them.

I haven’t decided whether to use the little clothespins or if I should just string the hearts. Feel free to chime in if you have an opinion.

Did this project seem like it was way too involved for a banner? Probably. Did anyone else get caught up in a DIY project that turned out to be so much more labor-intensive than you expected?