DIY Christmas Banner Made with Peppermint Paper Rosettes
Create festive peppermint paper rosettes using paper and paint! Turn them into a fun DIY Christmas banner for the holiday season!
It’s the sixth day of my series “12 Days of Holiday Crafts” and today we’re making peppermint paper rosettes and turning them into the cutest DIY Christmas banner for the holidays! I love making paper rosettes, also known as paper medallions. They are easy to make and they add a festive spirit to any project.
Paper rosettes can be made out of both decorative or solid paper. You can make giant rosettes to decorate the wall at a party or small ones to embellish a card. Use them in wreaths, banners, award ribbons and more. One of my favorite things to do with paper rosettes is paint them! I have painted them to look like watermelons for a fun summer banner and fireworks for a patriotic wreath. For this banner, I painted them to look like peppermints – perfect for Christmas time!
To make the peppermint rosettes, I first painted my paper with red watercolor paint in wide diagonal lines. Once it was dry, I cut the paper into strips and accordion-folded them. After the rosette is formed, the diagonal lines make the perfect peppermint swirls.
I tried using different sheets of scrapbook paper that had red diagonal lines, but they were too thin and close together. Making your own paper allows you to create larger, bolder diagonal lines. While I chose to paint my lines with red watercolor paint on watercolor paper, you could also use a red crayon, marker or colored pencil on white cardstock.
Once the peppermint rosettes are formed, clip them to a piece of yarn or twine using clothespins. I found the cutest red and white Snowflake Clothespins for my Christmas Bucket List Sign and have been using the leftover clothespins for all sorts of projects! They were perfect for this banner!
How to Make A DIY Christmas Banner with Peppermint Paper Rosettes
Supplies Needed
- Red watercolor paint
- 9 x 12 in Watercolor Paper
- Ruler
- Red marker for touch-ups
- Wide 1″ paintbrush
- Paper Trimmer or scissors
- Scoring Board and stylus
- Hot glue
- Red buttons
- Red ribbon, twine or yarn
- Snowflake Clothespins
Creating the Peppermint Paper
Start by creating your own paper which will make the peppermint swirls once the rosettes are formed. Mark a dot on your paper 8″ up from the bottom and 8″ over from the left side. Draw a diagonal line starting in the bottom left corner so it intersects with your drawn dot. This is your first diagonal line that all of the others will be based on.
Use a ruler to make diagonal lines 1″ apart.
Paint the paper with red watercolor paint following the diagonal lines you drew with a pencil. I used a 1″ wide paintbrush, the same width as my diagonal sections.
Let the paper dry completely.
Forming the Peppermint Rosettes
Once the peppermint paper has been created, it’s time to turn it into paper rosettes. Start by cutting the paper into 2″-wide strips using a scissors or paper trimmer.
Score the strips of paper every 1/2″ and then accordion fold them. I used a scoring board which makes this step go quickly. If you don’t have a scoring board, you can use a pencil to mark 1/2″ on the back of each strip of paper and then accordion-fold following your marks.
Each rosette is made from two strips of paper. Adhere two strips together trying to match up the diagonal lines the best you can. They will likely not match up perfectly so you can use a red marker to fill in gaps and make them match.
Attach the other two ends of the paper strips to form a loop. You can see below how I lined up my diagonal stripes. They were off by about 1/4″, so I just used a red marker to fill in the missing section so the diagonal line continued.
Once the loop is formed and the diagonal lines connected, it is time to form the rosette. Place a little mound of hot glue on a small piece of paper about 1″ x 1″. Center the accordion-folded loop over this and press the center edges down so the loop becomes flat and looks like a paper rosette. Hold it in place for a bit while the glue dries.
Repeat for as many peppermint rosettes as you’d like in your Christmas banner!
If you’d like, add a red button to the center of each paper peppermint.
Making the DIY Christmas Banner
Once the rosettes are formed, it is really easy to make them into a banner. Simply clip them to a length of red yarn, Baker’s twine, or ribbon using clothespins. The red and white snowflake clothespins are perfect!
The banner is finished and ready to be hung up and enjoyed! Paper rosettes, or medallions, are so festive! They are perfect for parties and the holiday season. I’ll be adding this banner to my holiday decor, especially for our gingerbread house decorating parties.
Check out my other peppermint and gingerbread-themed craft projects including my Gingerbread House Award Ribbons, Color-Your-Own Gingerbread House Treat Box and North Pole Bakery Gingerbread Apron.
