Polaroid Photo Banner

Let me preface this project post by saying one thing…I am really not a crazy cat lady! For the past 12 years, I have had only one cat. However, when my husband and I stopped by our local animal shelter this past New Year’s Eve to drop off our usual donation, we found ourselves leaving with a new kitten. Oops…

I have slowly been collecting almost all of the Polaroid frames by Sarah Hurley in the Online Store (like this one). I didn’t really know how I was going to use them, but I just really loved the idea of them. So, after weeks of taking loads of photos of our new kitten, I started seeing how some of the little phrases, even the holiday ones, applied to both of my little guys.

Inspired by the old Polaroid photos I have laying around, as well as the color of my little guys, I decided on a black and white theme for my banner. The pops of red on each pennant were actually an afterthought because I thought this would make a sweet Valentine’s Day banner too.

Because the color scheme was so simple, though, I wanted to play with a lot of different textures. I cut the pennants from glossy cardstock, the heart vines from glitter paper, the photo frames from woodgrain cardstock, and the photos from Silhouette Printable Cotton Canvas. I love using the Printable Cotton Canvas material for photos…they come out crisp and beautiful and just seem like little works of art…yes, even photos of sleeping cats!

You can print and cut your photos in the shape of any design you own using your Silhouette Studio software. If you have the Designer Edition, it is particularly easy…all you need to do is drag a photo from your desktop or a folder into any shape open in your software. From there, you can change the scale and position of the photo in the shape using the tools in the Advanced Options of the Fill Pattern window shown above. For this project, my design turned out to be a simple square, but think about all of the ornate frame and tag shapes from the Online Store that you could fill with photos!

If you don’t have the Designer Edition of the software, you’ll need to open the file up in your workspace and resize it to be able to fit within your shape nicely. Then position the shape on top of the photo, select both the photo and the shape, and click the “Crop” button in the Modify window. You’ll also have to be sure to turn on the cut lines on your newly cropped photo.

I popped my Polaroid frames up on top of my canvas photos using foam squares, then used more foam squares under the photos to add even more dimension to each pennant. Two tiny black clothespins then hold each pennant onto my baker’s twine. I think this banner would work great for birthdays, holidays, or everydays…and might work fine with photos of human children too.

I’d love to hear your comments!

Shapes Used:

Additional Supplies:

Cardstock from DCWV “Forever and Always” collection
Glitter paper from DCWV “Glitzy” stack
Woodgrain cardstock from Simon Says Stamp
Bakers twine from Two Berry Creative