I love Little Golden Books. I love them so much I decided to start collecting them several years ago. I now have amassed more than 300 Little Golden Books and the number grows each time I go to a yard sale. Because of this, I have many duplicates. When we went to theme my youngest daughter’s room, I knew I wanted to do it Little Golden Book themed. I found a banner like the one I made, on Etsy for $15+ (different sellers had different prices) and I was a little set back at the price.
I decided I could easily make my own Little Golden Book Banner! I found a SUPER easy way to make them, and each length of banner only costs me about $3.25! So I can make about 5 Little Golden Book Banners for the price of buying one Little Golden Book Banner. Seems like a no-brainer to me! This is a no-sew tutorial. Initially I was going to sew, but most of the books I wanted to use for my banner were antiques and I wasn’t sure how the paper would hold up to my sewing machine. Instead of sewing I used hot glue and am SUPER happy with the results.
Side note is that you may need therapy, like I did, after chopping up a Little Golden Book. This will be one of THE hardest moments of your life, going against every fiber of your being, to destroy this book. Alas, it must be done, because the end result is adorable. Tawny Scrawny Lion is my favorite too. I can’t talk about it anymore…too traumatic.
You will need:
3 yards 1/2″ double fold extra wide bias tape in pink (say that three times fast!) (also 50% cheaper at Walmart)
1 Little Golden Book that you can chop up without remorse
Pencil
Hot glue gun
Scissors
Choose the books you will mutilate for this project. Depending on how you space it, you should be able to fit most of one book per 3 yard section of bias tape. Buy the exact bias tape I told you to. The reason being is that it’s already pre-folded for what you need it to be, so assembling the rest is a BREEZE.
The next step is to remove the cover and binding of the book. Just tear off the covers, then remove the staples to keep all the pages intact and together. Make sure your glue gun is plugged in and warming up too.
Using a pencil, find the center of the width of the pages along the bottom of the pages. Make a dot at the center. Use one of the book covers and trace a diagonal line from the center dot to the top corner of the pages. Repeat that step for the other side. It should look like the picture when you’re done. Use your scissors and cut all the pages at once. I did that, and then just trimmed any uneven portions along the edge when I was done. I went through and decided which side of each flag had more “picture” and chose that to be the front of my banner.
Decide how long you want the end “tassle” to be on your Little Golden Book Banner, and then put in your first triangle, wide side up. I slid the triangle in the bias tape, then just hot glued the bias tape to the front, and pressed it down. Then glued the back down in the same way.
I just winged the distance I wanted between each penant flag on my Little Golden Book Banner. Then after I had two glued in, I used the distance the the previous two to be my guide for every one after that. You will also need to make sure you glue the bias tape together in between each flag as well, so you don’t get weird gapping.
That’s it! That’s all you need to do to make your Little Golden Book Banner! I am in LOVE with how these turned out. Realistically you could do this with other children’s books like Dr. Suess, old Disney books, etc. I am just a Little Golden Book fanatic and had to use these! If you have any questions, or if you made your own we’d love to know! Leave questions in the comments below. If you made it, take a pic and email us at downredbuddrive@gmail.com and you may be featured on our social media channels!
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