Saving Money Challenge: Homemade Birthday Banner

I created a birthday banner for under $2.  I think it has more pizazz than store bought banners.  I think it looks really neat - but you might think it looks white trashy.  I don't care.  This is like Dollar Tree craft time ladies....

First, my "theme" for this birthday is Smurfs.  All good homemakers MUST have a theme for birthday parties these days.  If you don't, you suck.  So I bought a package of blue lunch plates at the Dollar Store.

I then when to Classroom Clipart and printed out the Large alphabet letters I needed for my project.  I didn't adjust the image at all and printed out on regular old white paper.  I cut out the letters and hot glue-gunned them to paper plates as shown.  Then I took my hole punch and punched holes in both sides of each letter plate. 

I have a ton of ribbon laying around my house.  So I cut out a bunch of 4" long pieces of a blue one.

I just "knotted" the 4" pieces to connect the plates.  You could cut the ribbon longer and "bow" them for a more fancy look.  I'm going to have 3 different banners that I'm going to hang in order to say "Happy Smurfday Ben".  Isn't that really gay?  I'm such an obnoxious homemaker.  

I didn't hang it up because it's pretty big and it's going to go outside (crossing the fingers that no rain will come our way).  

So what did I use:

1 pack of 20 plates from the Dollar Tree - $1.00

8 sheets of paper to print out my saying (I put two letters on one sheet)

2 hot glue gun sticks.  (You could use regular glue - I just love hot glue).

1 roll of ribbon (can be bought for .50-$1.00 at Michael's).  

My out of pocket cost was $1 since I had all the other things laying around.  I'll add a picture of the final product after the party.  Hopefully it looks smurfarific and not trashy.  Who am I kidding!