DIY Paper Accordion Birthday Banner

You must think I am on a DIY/crafting hiatus. I just realized that most of my posts for the month of September, are recipes. What with planning a birthday and coming up with the October Photo Styling Challenge post, crafting has taken a back seat. Not to worry, I have an easy one to share with you today.

I made some lovely paper accordions to make into a banner for Boy’s birthday party. Paper accordions are so simple to make and the end result is so pretty. I’ve made some earlier for my book page wreath. Go here to take a look at them. The possibilities of using these pretty accordion fans are endless. Make them into wreaths, hang them on the walls, fix them on skewers or sticks to resemble flowers, make banners out of them or place them on party tables for added pops of color.

There are a couple of ways to make paper accordions. I follow the method of folding a sheet of paper to make a fan shape, and joining two such fans to form a circle shape. Since I didn’t take pictures of the process, here is a good tutorial.

As I wanted to use them for Boy’s birthday, I used bright-colored craft paper and used regular white glue to hold the accordions together.

The above picture roughly illustrates what I did.

You will need:

Paper
Glue
Stapler or string
Ribbon or yarn to make into a banner

How to:

Fold a sheet of paper in accordion style (hence the name).
Use a stapler or string at the middle to hold the folds together. Fold it in half and glue two of the end folds together. This makes a fan shape. See the brown fan in the picture above.
Join a couple of them to make a full circle.

Note: The size of the paper used determines the end size and also how many fans are needed to make a full circle. If you are using smaller size paper, it may not fan out much and you will need 3-4 of them to make a full circle. Just experiment to see what works best.