Banners

In the past week, I've been a banner making fool.  My dear friend, Lindy, is having a baby and we're throwing her a shower in a few weeks.  She is one of my friends who really loves and appreciates my scrapbooking style.  So, it was very easy for me to offer to make her a cute banner that could hang as a decoration during the shower and then in the baby's room.  Not as easy for me to actually make it since the phrase she picked used 13 tiles.  (Just kidding...I was delighted to do it but have to give her a little guff because it was just so funny).  It turned out the be my favorite banner ever.  The colors (her choice) made it really, really easy to be creative and come up with something fun.

After completing it, I decided Anna needed one for her room.  Mary and I worked on one together last year that now hangs in her room.  It's cute and girly and true to Mary, very, very pink.  Anna, my little almost redhead, never gets pink.  She gets lavender.  And her room is a pretty mix of lavender and green.  So of course her banner is, too.  This one came together much quicker than Lindy's, partially because it was much shorter and partially because of the audience.  Anna could give a rip if it's my best work, and sometimes, taking away the pressure is all I really need.

One thing you might notice is that the banner spells out "Annie" rather than "Anna".  Done for two reasons.  First and foremost, Anna is just boring...the same two letters twice.  Hard to be ultra-creative and frankly, I run out of the A's in my stash pretty quickly these days (still cursing the fact that on my name-deciding-spreadsheet I didn't have a category detailing how the choice would impact scrapbooking since all three of my kids have an A in their name, but I digress...)  Secondly, I've determined that banners with an odd number of tiles just hang better.  Something about there being a middle tile "centered" just gives me a sense of balance.  Anyway, we try to call Anna a combo of all three of the names we think she may use in the future (Anna, Annie + Anne), but we use Anna most, and it's the name Anna calls herself.  I think Annie might be an easy transition for her once she heads to school, so I'm not feeling like a complete loser for using it in her room.  Of course, there are some of you who think I'm a complete nerd for even worrying about it (like you, Mick), so I'll remind you that I am ME, and I'm typically worrying about something stupid.

Anyway, showed it to the bigger kids (luckily at 9:20, Anna is down for the night...on the floor, natch) and Sam commented that this one was my best ever.  Cute.  Sounds to me like he's buttering me up for one in his room.  That will present a problem as I really don't have a lot of stuff to butch one of these bad boys up.  :-)  Poor Sam.