Junk in the Trunk Banner

The sunshine is so bright today through my craft room window. The snow is turning to fat drops of water that I can hear dripping from the eaves of my roof. Not yet a day to venture outside, a Junk in the Trunk Banner to make a perfect solution!

The crafts you will find here on my blog are as simple as can possibly be. I want anyone to feel they can give something a go even though they may have very few materials on hand. This is the sum lot of paper I have in my craft room, but I am determined to wiggle a banner out of it.

Don't you always have those certain paper you aren't the craziest about? Those are the ones Perfectly Perfect for this project. I have cut my banner shape as many times as I could from my papers. There will be a front, a back, and any others can be deconstructed to use as a contrast.

THE BEST TRICK I KNOW! Anytime you want to back a printed piece of paper, glue it directly to your background paper AND THEN cut your edge border. LOL! It took me ages to figure out this trick for myself, and I get so mad when I forget it.

PLEASE don't forget to sandwich cardboard between your front and back layers of printed paper. It makes all the difference in your finished project.

With just a basic triangle in front of you, it can be perplexing how to fill all the space. My rule of thumb is to divide the triangle's space once with a portion of the triangle itself (blue strip on top), and once with a different shape all together. I had just enough paper to trace a circle from. Now for the fun part, the junk!

I have backed my circle piece in white and offset it's placement to create movement. Greeting card images I like best are what I call "scenery" cards. Not that they are a landscape, but that a scene of everyday life from a past era unfolds itself for you.  Sigh! I love vintage.  I have used flowers from my State Fair projects that were of a larger size and have mimicked the curve of my circle for my Scrabble tile placement.

Remember not to "float" your elements, but rather let them "waterfall" by connecting them to each other. Using a black and white image of this cute couple learning to knit (what a Peach of a fella) makes my banner cute but not cutesy.

I love my Junk in the Trunk Banner! It has turned out wonderfully homespun and makes me long for warm summer days and the coming of my town's County Fair.