Tag Archives | american flag

Celebrate with a Handcrafted Sequin Flag

By Connie Mercer on July 3, 2017 in Holidays, Patriotic

Hi, Connie here with Buttons Galore & More design team! This fun handcrafted sequin flag project is great to create with children, and will look fabulous in your home or on your front door, tucked into a grapevine wreath.

This sequin flag project was created using the brand new Bon Voyage Sequin tin by 28 Lilac Lane. Take a closer look at this beautiful new premium sequin tin!

The inspiration for this sequin flag project came from the Bon Voyage sequin tin itself. It is full of red, white and blue sequins along with white hearts and blue stars – so lush! Can’t you see a child waving this flag at a celebration parade and then saving it, by tucking it away in a grapevine wreath for the front door? Or displaying it in a vintage soda bottle? Either way this flag will be a super cute was to display your patriotism!

Supplies needed to make a sequin flag:

28 Lilac Lane “Bon Voyage” Premium Sequin Tin
Buttons Galore & More “Bright Mix” Button Basics
cardstock (white/black)
Authentique pattern paper
clear drying glue
red and blue twine
burlap, stick & soda bottle (optional)

How to make your sequin flag:

(1) Sketch out a USA flag on white cardstock that is about 4″ X 6″. Separate the large blue sequins, using a toothpick, from the sequin tin.

(2) Glue the large blue sequins on the flag with clear drying glue. Add the white hearts to the blue section and let dry. Do the same with the small red sequins, placing them in strips. Let dry.

(3) Cut the blue section out, and then the red strips. Piece them on a 4″ X 6″ piece of white cardstock or grid paper. When it is dry, mat the flag on black cardstock.

(4) Glue the flag to a piece of burlap ( 5″ X 7″ ) and then glue a stick to the reverse side. (I used a stick from my yard.)

(5) Use twine and buttons, create streamers for the side of the flag. Tie these to the top of the stick.

I chose the vintage soda bottle to display my flag instead of a grapevine wreath. The soda bottle is full of red buttons to hold the stick in place. I really love the finished look!

Thanks for stopping by~

Connie Mercer/DT Member

Frame a Patriotic Rustic Flag for July 4th!

By Nancy Nally on June 6, 2016 in Home Decor, Patriotic

It’s time to make another addition to our holiday frame project! This time, we’re creating a rustic flag insert for the frame that will be perfect for showing your patriotic pride for the 4th of July or the upcoming Olympics!

(For those new to the series, the holiday frame project is a 8″x10″ frame that I’m creating a series of decorative inserts for to celebrate various holidays and occasions. To see previous installments in the series, click here.)

Supplies:

Buttons Galore Button Basics (Patriotic Mix)
FolkArt Multi-Surface Satin Acrylic Paint (Apple Red)
Delta Ceramcoat Select Multi-Surface Satin Acrylic Paint (Classic Blue)
Burlap Sheet
Painter’s Tape

The hardest part of making this rustic flag project is…the math! To start, you are going to need to measure the opening on your frame, and decide how much border you want around your frame. Then use the painter’s tape to mask off the edges right up to the area that you want to paint.

Divide the remaining vertical area by 7 to determine the width of the stripes on the flag. Use painter’s tape to mark off the bottom stripe and fill in the stripe with paint. Remove the tape right away. While the stripe dries, determine how wide you want your blue area for the stars (I suggest about 40% of the width). Then mask it off with vertical strip of tape to protect it while you paint the top two red stripes. Measure down from the top to create your first stripe, lay down a piece of painter’s tape to protect the “white” stripe, and fill in the red stripe with paint. Remove the tape immediately after painting.

Letting each stripe dry before painting the next one, continue measuring and masking with tape before taping, until all 4 red stripes are painted.

Once all of the red paint is dry, then you can lay down painter’s tape to paint the blue area.

Peel the tape up as soon as you are finished painting, while the paint is still wet. Because of the open weave of the burlap, your paint will appear “patchy”, since in some places it will fill in the weave and in some it won’t. This adds to the rustic feeling of the project!

The final step is to select 13 small to medium sized white buttons from the Patriotic Mix of Button Basics. Arrange them in a random way in the blue area, and use a hot glue gun to attach them to the flag.

Now you’re all ready to put your flag in your frame and celebrate the 4th of July or cheer on Team USA for the Olympics this summer!

Paint up a Patriotic Simple Pallet Flag!

By Nancy Nally on May 23, 2016 in Holidays, Patriotic

The summer holidays coming has many of us here in the U.S. wanting to display our more patriotic side. This simple pallet flag will help you show your love of country while bringing some country charm to your home as well!

To create this pallet flag, I started by painting the entire pallet white. Then, to create my stripes, I measured the tallest height of the pallet and divided by seven (the number of stripes that I wanted) to get the width of my stripes.

Using painter’s tape to block off the areas that I didn’t want to paint red ensured that I got crisp edges on my stripes. I just measured the width I wanted and laid down a strip of tape at that mark. Then from that edge, I measured again and lay another strip of tape at that mark. That left a small open area between the two strips of tape. To protect my white paint from splatters while painting with the red, I laid down an extra strip of tape on top of the others to fill in that gap. When I was done, I had blue and white stripes like this:

Once the tape was in place, I painted the areas that weren’t covered in blue tape with red paint. The paint below appears patchy because I peeled up the tape while it was still drying – an important step to keep the edges of your paint crisp. Once dry, the paint is much more even.

Instead of painting the blue field for the stars I chose to use a paper background. The paper filled in the holes between the planks on the pallet, allowing for even spacing of the stars. It also allowed me to extend the paper above some of the shorter pallet planks, to the height of the taller planks. This gave me more room to work with for the stars. The paper was adhered down with matte finish white glue.

Before attaching the stars, their shanks had to first be removed. Placing the stars required a lot of patience. I worked in sections, letting glue dry on each row before moving to the next so that I wouldn’t push previous stars out of position placing the next row. It’s difficult to get the arrangement exactly perfect, but on a rustic pallet flag like this, that is part of the charm!

While I used silver quilted stars for this project, any of our 3/4″ or less sized stars would work (like our Texas Stars, our Gold Stars, or our Silver Star assortment, or the white stars from our Stars & Stripes assortment). If you don’t have the patience to do all 50 stars, try arranging 13 of them in a circle.

Supplies: