Monday, March 5, 2012

How to: Make Accordian Fan Decor

 I was in charge of decorating for a church Valentine's Day Party. I LOVE how these pinwheels (I don't even know what they are called? Fans?) turned out.
The two biggest (middle pink, and far right red) were made out of wrapping paper (15 inches wide) I am not sure how many feet were on the roll. We just kept accordian folding until the roll was finished.
All the others were made from poster board. The ones with stripes and polka dots were painted. I only had red and white poster board and just went from there. The biggest ones made from poster board are 3 half sections of poster board.
As far as a tutorial, here would be the steps.
1. Get two regular posterboards (it comes in extra thick, also. Don't get that.)
2. Cut them both lengthwise in half. You will use 3 of the halves.
3. Accordian fold all three sections the same width. I used a ruler and scored the posterboard with a bone folder. I just used the width of the ruler so each of the folds would be equadistant from each other.
4. I stapled the sections together, fanning them out to make the circular shape. I am sure you could try glue, or tape. I didn't think the staples were obvious.
5. To stabalize the fan to make it easier to hang I hot glued a paper plate (with the rim cut off) to the back.
6. Also to stabalize, but also to make it cute, I cut out scrapbook paper circles for the front centers and added a heart on top.
7. I ran into some problems trying to hang them, but then came up with this solution that worked great. I twisted a pipecleaner with the ends together but the middle open so it looked like the eye of a needle (wouldn't a picture be helpful?) and the glued the twisted part on the back onto the paper plate so it only needed one push pin on which to hang.
Vwala!

1 comment:

Jill said...

Oh my gosh these are awesome! Just what I was looking for for a baby shower I am throwing! Thanks so much.