DIY Hanging Banner

Having recently finished sorting out our bedroom and lightening the place up a bit, we've been brainstorming about how to decorate its sad, bare walls. After noticing this really lovely hanging banner in one of EssieButton's vlogs, we thought “perfect!” - but why not try our own hand at it? We actually have some beginners' screenprinting equipment too so we were good to go and just ordered some Irish linen off eBay to print onto but if you fancy giving it a go and don't have the equipment, it's still easy enough. This great tutorial uses way common household items to do the same job!

Given the freedom, we wanted to print an old Irish proverb: Ní neart go cur le chéile (there is no strength without unity), and we got to work tracing the lettering onto a scrap off greaseproof paper – I wish we'd had a projector of some sort but, I have to be honest, I just traced it directly from the laptop screen. Maybe try to avoid damaging your LCD screen though! This went under the wire mesh (held tight by a wooden frame) and was traced again before we painted every inch of the mesh that we didn't want paint to seep through with screen filler.

After leaving it overnight to dry and making sure that no sneaky holes had appeared, only the lettering was negative and so we were able to use black drawing fluid, slathered across our design, to print our proverb onto a cut of linen. We lifted the frame and, sure enough, it worked!

We gave the print a few hours to dry out completely but we really wanted a wee banner so our work wasn't done yet! Roughly, we cut three straight sides and a little tail for the bottom and then used fabric glue to fold in the messy edges and to create space along the top for string to go through for hanging. We sealed these by ironing, thread some string through and it was finally finished.

Obviously this was our first attempt and so it's a pretty shabby-looking but it's made with love so we're happy with it!