Kayela e-mailed me recently and asked me how I made my "Welcome to Sixth Grade" banner, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to make a "Spooky" Halloween banner.

Yes, I realize that Halloween is just a week away, but I've always been an eleventh hour person anyway, so here goes.

I've been thinking about this banner for a long time, over a year, and all this time I've known that the letters had to be cut out of black glitter paper. I found this awesome stuff at Target in their scrapbooking isle. You get two pieces in a package for a ridiculously cheap price. 

Fine. I really can't remember exactly what I paid, but I know it was cheap.

I used this Halloween paper pack and I think I got it at Wal Mart. Or Michael's.

Okay, somewhere. It's made by K & Company, does that help?

You should be proud of me because I took notes on everything I did on my Cricut, just so I could report back to you exactly what I did. For starters, I used the Old West Cricut Cartridge for my font. Of course I bought that cartridge because my girls are so horsey. I cut my letters out at 4 inches and my pressure was set to HIGH because the glitter was a little tougher to cut through than regular cardstock.

For my black cardstock background, I used the Creative Memories Reminisce Accents Cricut cartridge. The shape I used is the Doily with the Frame Shadow button activated. Pressed, whatever. I don't speak Cricut. The size I used is 4-3/4 inches.

I used the same shape for my background paper, and all my settings were the same except for the size. My size was set to 4-1/2 inches so that I'd have a very skinny black border of cardstock showing. The cardstock not only accents the banner pieces, but it makes it a little more sturdy.

I used tape runner to adhere my letters and backing paper. I found that I needed a lot more tape runner on the glitter pieces because the glitter shed a bit and made the sticky less sticky.

I think my favorite part of making this banner was picking out and placing all the cute Halloween stickers I bought for it. I found most of my Halloween stickers at Wal Mart for $1.50 per pack. They're super cute too.

In order to hang the banner, I used my Crop-a-Dile to punch two holes in each letter background shape to run my string through. It was kind of hard deciding where to put the holes, but I talked myself through it.

Once I punched my holes, I used my Crop-a-Dile to set eyelets in each of the holes. The eyelets will  help to keep the string that will hang the banner, from ripping through the paper.

I love my Crop-a-Dile.

It does a nice job setting eyelets and I don't have to use a hammer. That was back in the Olden Days that people used hammers to set their eyelets. I remember going to crops and getting a headache from all the pounding.

Don't tell me you're still using a hammer either. If you are, don't admit it, just sneak it into the tool box where it belongs, and go and get yourself a Crop-a-Dile. I'm pretty sure that Wal Mart even sells Crop-a-Diles. You can rationalize the purchase by reminding yourself how much money you're saving not having to buy so much Advil.

Once my eyelets were set, it was time to string my letters together. Since this is a spooky banner, it had to be black, so I went in search of this stuff. It's hemp cord which is used for jewelry making. No jewelry makers need to know that I'm using it for evil. I mean spooky.

I like to start at the end of the word so I don't have to waste time measuring and guessing how long I need my string to be. When I get the whole word on the string and get it all adjusted, then I just cut it and I don't have to waste any of it.

I also feed my string in through the front of the first hole, then back up through the second hole. I just think it looks better that way.

Halfway there, and I'm liking the way it's looking.

Isn't this dude CUH-reepy? He gives me the super creeps.

So many fun stickers, so little time.

Once the letters are strung together, I tied two pieces of ribbon to the string between each letter, and a few pieces at each end. The ribbon serves two purposes. First, and possibly most important, it provides cute. Second, it keeps the letters from sliding into each other, thereby keeping a uniform spacing of the letters.

This is the sort of thing that gives an OCD freak like myself hives.

There. No hives.

I apologize for the pictures. The natural light has left Idaho until May. We've had our fun, now it's time for winter.

I know I'm way late to be doing this, and you probably won't even be able to use it until next year, but who wants one of these creepy little things? I made an extra one for one of my lucky readers. Leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite thing about Halloween is. I'm only leaving this open for 24 hours. At 10:00 Monday night, mountain time, I'm picking a winner. Maybe, just maybe, you might get it in time to hang it up for one day.

Do you remember once upon a time when I first got this Making Memories set-up? It was nearly two years ago and I think there were only about ten people visiting my site at that time, so I won't be offended if you don't remember. 

Since you probably weren't there, I'll tell you, I was so excited, and I couldn't wait to fill it up with all kinds of good stuff. I started with my ribbon because I love ribbon. It was love for the first month at least.

And then I started to become disgusted with the whole shebang. If you own one of these, I'm sure you know why, but if you don't, let me just share a little negativity with you.

The ding dang dowels that hold the ribbon on are too fat! That means some spools of ribbon don't fit on them unless you gouge bigger holes out of their spools with your craft knife, thereby nearly maiming yourself in the process because, maybe you're ungraceful. Like me.

The ding dang dowels have to be removed every time you want to add a new spool of ribbon. That means you have to pull all the spools off if you are an OCD freak and you like your ribbon to be in rainbow order. Not that you are like that, but some of us have special needs.

Because the ding dang dowels are too blinking fat, there is much dropping and launching of ribbon spools in the interchange process, which then results in unspooled ribbon pooling at your feet and possibly tripping you. Because of that whole lack of grace thing.

And yes, I might be bitter because my mom would never let me take ballet lessons and I so wanted to take ballet lessons. I don't care that I have always looked like a football player in a tutu. Even at my thinnest, I had healthy thighs. That's beside the point though. I could have been graceful.

And now I'm not.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up my complaints about the Making Memories set-up, with some of my emotional issues that I'm sure you do not care about.

I don't like to come into the blogosphere and just whine about my petty problems, so I now feel the need to share with you how I solved my ribbon problem. It was such a big problem.

First, I started by clearing off the bottom three shelves. Originally, there were only two shelves for ribbon, but I decided I wanted three, so that's why I have three shelves naked here.

I needed Peanut Head to help me with this project because I have an unhealthy fear of power tools. On account of I lack grace because I never had ballet. 

Poor Peanut Head gets roped into so many of my projects. And just between you and me, he tries to run but I have ginormous muscles in my healthy thighs and I catch him before he can get away.

Plus he loves me. For some reason.

Okay, so what Peanut Head is doing here is he's cutting some yard sticks that I bought. I painted a little more than the first 24 inches with a couple thin coats of white paint, so that they would go better with the shelf. I didn't want full coverage though, because I wanted to still be able to see the inch markings and be able to use them when cutting ribbon.

The shelf itself is roughly 24 inches, so that's what that measurement is. Peanut Head cut three yardsticks for my three shelves. Before he made the 24 inch cut for the length, he cut about a quarter inch off along the entire length of the yardstick. The whole point of the yardsticks is to form a little fence to keep the ribbon from rolling off the shelves. Since Peanut Head cut it to be slightly skinnier, it's short enough that you can still get the ribbon in.

Next, Peanut Head cut some little half inch pieces off the extra bits of yardstick. These little pieces are to hold the fence out a little bit away from the bottom of the existing shelf, so that I could slide the cut end of ribbon through that small opening as a guide.

He finished the cut with an X-acto knife because . . . oh heck, I forget why. I know there was a good reason for it, but I can't remember what it was. Was it to avoid splitting the wood? Somebody that knows, please pipe in here anytime.

We, that is the married "we" which means "him," then glued one of the little pieces to the back of each end of the cut yardsticks. We cut six pieces total--two for each shelf.

After we glued them, Peanut head clamped them together until they dried.

While the glue was drying, we drilled the holes to attach the yardsticks. 

And here's a little heads up, these units are made out of particle board so it's not the easiest stuff to work with. We learned here that we had to drill smaller pilot holes first. Peanut Head let me do some of this part. I'm okay to use a drill, but I'm slow and I mess up a lot.

Peanut Head also drilled some little craters in the ends of the yardsticks for the screw heads to sink down into so they would be flush and pretty. I'm sure there's a technical term for it, but it seems to have escaped me. Sorry. Next time I'll try to take better notes.

See, isn't that pretty? Um, actually . . . no. It's ugly. Not only did we split the wood a bit, but the screw really is not pretty. It needs something.

There. That's better. I whipped out my glue gun and some pretties and got right to work. Pretty nifty, eh? Well, except for the leftover glue gun snot. I still have to go pull all those stringy bits off.

This is what it looked like after all the little fences were put on. I could hardly wait to get all my ribbon on it. In my giddy eagerness, I might have knocked Peanut Head over before he was finished tightening that last screw. Oopsie.

Ahhhhhhhh. I could just drape some twinkle lights over it and lay under it like it was my Christmas tree. It's so pretty.

I glued buttons and flowers over the screws. Because I could. And the knobs that used to hold the dowels on? I just glued them over the unsightly holes they left behind. I fed the dowels to the Gunny Man Who Thinks He's a Woodpecker.

I went back to IKEA over the summer and got enough of these CEEEEEEEE-UTE little jars to hold all my buttons. Um, buttons that I didn't have yet, but had to go and buy immediately upon acquiring the super cute jars. Don't they just scream "Fill me with buttons!" to you? Me too.

I've been living with this set-up for a couple months now and I have to tell you, I LOVE IT. It was the perfect fix.

And I don't miss the dowels one little bit.

I'm so excited to share this new thing with you, I can barely contain myself.