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For those of you who know me, you will not be surprised that I have begun prepping for Lily's 7th birthday party.

Yes - it is not till September.  And yes - I am crazy.  Let's just get past that.

The theme this year is an Art Party.  Think lots of crafts and rainbow colored decorations.  This banner was the starting point.  

I got the basis of this idea from a wonderful blog called Frugal Family Fun.  

I LOVE THIS BLOG!  

She is clever and she makes bright fun easy kid friendly crafts that are C-H-E-A-P to make.  

We used my cricut cutter to cut out our letters.  Then I gave the punched out letters to Lily and made her rearrange them to make at least five different words.  That turned out to be a great little side experience and I will totally do this again with her.  

Next, we took the letter backing and placed it on a piece of wax paper that was large enough to fold over the letter and to go under it.  

The folded wax paper needs to be at least as big as the letter opening.  

Then open up the fold, leaving the letter inside, and fill the letter with crayon shavings.  I little bit goes a long way.  

SLOWLY - lift off the letter and tap off the extra crayon shavings. 

Fold over the top half of the wax paper.

Put a dish towel over the folded wax paper and iron on top of the wax paper.  Let me make it very clear to you that ironing the wax paper without the towel will result in a smoking unhappy melty iron.  Maybe I tried that - I'm just saying.  If you move the iron around you get a smeared finish product, which looks cool.  But we stuck with just setting the iron on top and lifting it straight off after a few seconds.  Lily helped with the ironing.  I NEVER iron, so this was a good chance for her to learn about it.    

We used a paper cutter and/or scissors to trim the wax paper to fit slightly under the paper.  I used tape to stick the wax paper to the back of the letters.    

It took some patience and trimming.  Then a hole punch made holes for the ribbons on each side.

LOVE how it came out.