Paper Circle Garland

My niece Paige is graduating from cosmetology school tonight and asked me to help decorate her station for her last day. Hello, of course I'll help - happily! Her colors are black, gold, and cream - she didn't care what we did as long as it's "creative and cool", and doesn't involve tissue paper - apparently that's what everyone does which makes it not creative and cool.

I got the idea for circle garland on Pinterest, some for purchase and some homemade - of course I'm going to make it (!) - it'll be cute to drape over her mirror. Initially I planned to hot glue the cut out circles to some black and white bakers twine I have, but then I saw someone sewed the circles together and I wanted to try that - don't think I've sewn on paper before...

The hardest part of this project was cutting out the circles - and that wasn't hard, just time consuming. I have a circle rotary cutter and that was helpful, you could do them by hand but that's gonna take even longer of course. I cut out 21 small 1 inch circles from 3 different cardstock papers (black, shiny gold, and cream), for a total of 63, 6 2" circles (total 18), and 3 3" circles. Then I figured out the pattern I wanted which ended up being one 2" circle then 3 small circles, interspersing the largest circle every now and then, and started sewing - between every circle I continued to sew for a second so there is a little space between the circles.

The sewing of the garland didn't take long at all and look how great this turned out! I'm going to be making these often now in different colors - and will be on the lookout for pre-cut paper circles!

To finish her station we put up the shiny gold paper across the top and used black letter stickers to put her name on it, then attached black balloons that I decorated by brushing on glue and sprinkling with chunky gold glitter. I'll show you how I did the balloons and what the final project looks like tomorrow after I take pictures tonight!

my mock up of the plan for her station