Little Lovey Doves: Baby Face Birthday Garland

My youngest daughter's first birthday party is a little more than 6 weeks away, and that means I am in full Mach 5 party planning mode. Call me crazy- but I always like to start making decorations and plans early so that I'm not up until 3am the night before the party, giving myself a massive headache from desperately blowing up as many balloons as I can (trust me, I've been there)!

One of the very first ideas I had for my Katie's party was a banner I pinned about 4 months ago.

Quite possibly the cutest thing ever! Find out how this banner's done at From Dahlias to Doxies

I know. Seriously...you don't have to say a word.

I about fell out of my chair when I saw this! Isn't it the cutest, most hilarious thing you've ever seen? I think it's pretty safe to say this is what set off my Party Planning Mania for Katie's first birthday, and I've been busily crafting ever since. (Seriously, check out my Pinterest page on it; it's a little ridiculous!)

So here's my interpretation of the banner from From Dahlias to Doxies. Since Katie's party is going to be a cowgirl theme, I wanted to make it a little more rustic. What do you think?

I'm pretty proud of it! I can't wait to drape it around the dessert table at the party.

Please forgive the crumby black couch in the background- it's part of our temporary living arrangements here in NC, and it shows EVERY little spill the girls get on it! But I digress...

So here's how I did it:

You'll need:
About 8 black and white print-outs of your little one's face, approximately the same size. (I just cropped mine on Instagram until I thought they were roughly equal in size).
Colored card stock for the hats
A sheet of thin poster board
A hot glue gun, or other adhesive of your choice
Burlap ribbon
Scissors or a box cutter

I started out by laying out my face print-outs and measuring the width of the foreheads. This told me how wide to make the card stock hats. The pictures I used all had roughly a 3 inch wide forehead.

Next, I made the hat cut-outs. Now since this is a cowgirl themed party, I wanted my little girl to be wearing a cowgirl hat, of course! But you could do any type of hat you wanted depending on the occasion or theme.

I just free-hand drew a cowboy hat into one of the pieces of card stock and used that as a template.

Make sure to see if it fits. So cute!

Next, I cut out the rest of my cowgirl hats, varying the colors and patterns.

Then I glued them to the faces, and then glued the whole things to the poster board to give my cowgirls a little extra firmness.

After I let them dry, I carefully cut out the cowgirl's faces using a box cutter. This proved to be the hardest part for me since I'm REALLY left-handed. If you don't know what that means, find the nearest lefty to you and ask them how many times they've sliced open their fingers doing something like this.

Then give them a hug. It's a hard world we live in.

Now, if you liked the way this looks, you could always just hot glue your faces onto a ribbon at this point and call it good. But I wanted to frame the faces a bit more, so I glued them onto two layers of coffee filters: one dyed with coffee, the other left white. I was so happy with how it framed those pretty little faces!