Project Joy 365 - Banner Freebie

Looking for a fun project to work on with your kiddos this week? How about a festive banner? The girls and I made this 'Happy Birthday Jesus' banner over the weekend and hung it up today in our living room. You can download the templates to print and make your own banner at the end of this post.

If you want to make your own banner templates in Photoshop or PSE, it's pretty easy.

Create a blank 8.5"x11" document. 

Then, create your banner shape. I used my brush tool, set to a solid round circle (Hard Mechanical) to create an outline for the banner. Turn your grids on (Ctrl + ' ) to make easy work of drawing straight lines. Hold your shift key while you click on intersection points of your grids and photoshop will draw a straight line between the two points.

My finished template looked like this. I made the banner size small enough to fit two on a page and it turned out to be a nice finished size.

I found some great Christmas fonts at this site: The Holiday Spot

I chose 'Kingthings Willow' because I liked all the swirls and stars in the font.

Once I installed the font, I typed the first two letters, each on their own layer, and sized them to fit in the banner templates.

To make the letters outlined, so they could be colored by my kiddos, I used a 10 pt stroke layer style and set the layer fill to 0%.

PSE does not have a stroke layer style. To create the stroke outline in PSE, Ctrl-Click on your letter thumbnail (creating marching ants around the letter). Create a new layer and use 'Edit>Stroke' to create a stroke outline of the letter on it's own layer. Then, turn off the visibility or delete the original letter layer before printing.

Or, if you would like a really quick and easy way to create your own letter outlines, simply open the PSD file labeled 'HBD_Jesus_Banner_template' included in the free download below. Simply select the letter layers and change the font or letter to your liking! The stroke style and 0% Fill are already applied to the layers for you! :)

I would love to see the banners you create! :D Have a great week!

Download 'Happy Birthday Jesus' Banner Templates Here