This week, I was commissioned by a coworker of my mom’s to design two banners for her daughter’s baby shower. Both of the banners were needed to cover up unattractive photos at the shower venue. Because of the short timeline and size of the banners, I decided to hand paint them rather than have them printed. If I had more notice, the printer I work with would have been able to print my designs for not too expensive, but I needed them done quickly, and for not too expensive, so painting would have to do!

I was given only a few requirements for the two banners. (1) Make the first one 3 feet by 5 feet with a beautiful piece of fabric that was given to me by the client, (2) Make the second one 6 feet 6 inches by 9 feet with any fabric, and (3) Match the theme, which was “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” With this small amount of guidance, I started my first large-scale banner project.

I have never done anything like this, so I did a lot of research beforehand. Unfortunately, there weren’t too many detailed (or relevant) tutorials on how to quickly and easily paint a large banner, so I wanted to put a little something together to help anyone out who may want to do this too by sharing my own steps and experiences I went through this week. It was fairly easy the way I planned and executed it, even with barely any fabric painting experience under my belt.

 

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PLANNING THE BANNER DESIGN

 

I’m a perfectionist, and being that this was the first time I’ve ever painted anything this big, my biggest worry was messing up the alignment of words and the composition of the whole thing. So, I drew up my designs of the two banners first, figuring out the colors and wording. I used the app Procreate on my iPad and my Apple Pencil, but not everyone has access to this, so my recommendation of what to use would be either Canva (a simple and free online design platform) or even Microsoft PowerPoint.

 

    

My Designs from Procreate

 

Designing it was easy for me, but for those who aren’t as comfortable as I may be, don’t worry about making the design perfect. All you need is to follow these few steps:

 

Size Your Document to be a Scaled Version of your Banner

Create a custom size in the program you chose to make it a scaled version of the size of your banner. For my two banners, I turned feet into inches, so for example, for my 3 feet by 5 feet banner, I made my document 3 inches by 5 inches. This will give you the same height to width ratio so the design turns out the same at the larger size.

 

Add the Most Important Elements

Usually, the most important item to plan on the design is the text, since typically this is the hardest thing to align and plan on a large banner. I hand wrote my wording, because I wanted calligraphy to be a part of my banners, but it’s generally easier to use fonts. Choose a general font that is similar (or exactly) what you want your painted words to look like. FYI, Canva is a great website for this, since they have a wide variety of fonts to choose from and great ideas.

If you have other important elements to add to your banner, like specific images or other items that may be difficult to draw or place, it’s important to add those too. What you don’t need to worry about are the smaller details that aren’t as difficult or need to be in specific places. I included stars, dots, a cloud, and a moon, but I didn’t look at the design much when I was actually painting because those were more flexible with their locations.

 

Choose your Colors

It’ll make your life a lot easier if you take the time to plan out what colors you’ll use for your banner. The colors you choose will determine which paints you need to get and what fabric you need, so choosing colors beforehand can save you money and time on choosing these things.

 

GATHERING MATERIALS

 

MY MATERIALS LIST:

Fabric – King Size flat sheet
Blue, gold, and white acrylic paint
Flat brushes
Sponge brushes
Palette paper
Star stencil
Iron-on hem
Dowel rod
String for hanging
Carpet sticky
Weights

 

FABRIC

Because of the large size (9 feet tall!) of the second banner I did, the easiest and cheapest fabric choice was a plain white king size bed sheet. I bought it on clearance from Walmart for only $9.00, which was a steal. If you’re doing a smaller banner, it may make more sense to actually go to a fabric or craft store and buy fabric by the yard, which would give you a lot more options in terms of background color.

 

PAINT

All you need are basic acrylic paints, nothing special. Fabric paint isn’t necessary unless you plan to wash it, so acrylic paints are the way to go. They also come in every color and style, so you’ll have endless options.

 

BRUSHES

I used brushes I already owned, that I use for painting canvas or for other projects. If you’re unsure of what brushes to use, I use flat brushes that were about the width of the letters I planned to paint, since that helped keep the width of my letters fairly uniform. If you’re using stencils of any kind, circular foam brushes are helpful for easy application.

 

MISCELLANEOUS PAINTING SUPPLIES

I had to do a number of stars, so I cheated a little and bought a star stencil to use. There are a lot of stencils to help out, but keep in mind that using a stencil on fabric is a little more difficult than using it on paper. Another thing I love to use is Palette paper, which is a pad of paper that has a plastic coating which makes it easy for both putting your paint on in larger quantities and mixing paint if you need to.

 

HEMMING

Because I had to change the size of both fabrics I had, I wanted to hem the edges to make it clean on the edges. I have no idea how to use a sewing machine, and I was on a deadline, so I used basic iron-on hem. Iron-on hem is a lifesaver, and is so incredibly easy to use to make your banner have cleaner edges.

 

HANGING SUPPLIES

For my smaller banner, the fabric that was given to me was actually a photo backdrop, so it already had a hemmed edge to be used for hanging. I purchased a simple wooden dowel rod from Home Depot, trimmed it down, drilled holes in each edge, and painted the edges that would be seen. I used a simple, thick cording to hang it, and it turned out really well. What you’ll need to hang it will depend entirely on what you want it to look like, so the options are endless.

 

WORKING ON THE BANNER

 

After any hemming you need to do, the next step is to actually work on your banner. For any lettering you need to add, I recommend drawing on the banner before painting. I freehanded the smaller banner, but for the larger banner I used a pencil to sketch out the letters. It’s not that easy to use an eraser to take off pencil, but it does work. Try to write as lightly as possible, because it was much harder to erase the darker the line was. If you are using a colored or dark banner, you can actually use a chalk pencil to draw your base, because it will erase with a little bit of water!

Next, paint! I recommend practicing your painting on a strip of leftover or similar fabric first, just to see how the fabric will react to the paint. Once you’re comfortable with the paint and the fabric, start your painting from either the top or the center to try to avoid having to reach over your wet paint or paint upside down. Most paints you won’t have to do a second coat, except possibly for white paint on colored backgrounds. If you want an example, on my smaller banner I only did one coat of white paint for the cloud on the top (because it gave off more of a slightly transparent look, like a cloud) and I did two coats of white on the wording.

While I was painting, I took many opportunities to stand up and look at the banner as a whole. It’s difficult to get an idea of the composition as a whole on a large banner while painting up close, so getting a look the entire thing, often, is very important.

Once the painting is finished and completely dry, then do what you need to hang your banner. For the small banner, I wanted something cuter for my client to be able to hang in her nursery after the baby shower, so I used a white thick cord and painted the rod a gold color to match the stars on the banner. It looked beautiful.

As for the larger banner, I used the weirdest method for hanging it – and even though it may not be relevant to anyone else, I figured I would share. I was told that the venue didn’t allow using Command hooks or any tape or adhesive at all, so all I had was the two inch top of the frame of the picture I was covering. It was a dilemma, so I had to be creative with my method of hanging this huge banner. What I decided to do was actually glue a strip of the rubber stuff that goes under carpeting to the back of the top, string a piece of cord through the hem, and hang two balloon weights off the end. Lucky for me, it ended up working great and held the banner up.

 

THE FINISHED PRODUCT

 

Small Banner

3’ x 5’

 

 

 

Large Banner

6’6” x 9’