Art - Baptism Banner

We created a Baptism Banner this morning as a Family Faith Fun activity. It was very easy (we had a 3 year old helping), though it wasn't cheap. Fabric is EXPENSIVE nowadays. But if you planned ahead and gathered fabrics on sale it might not be too bad.

I bought four different shades of blue fabrics - some solid and some printed, plus some really neat shimmery blue fabric. We also used rolls of glitter tulle. We tore the fabric into strips about 2.5-3 inches wide (if you buy 100% cotton, you can snip the ends and kids can easily tear the strips). You'll need the strips to be twice the finished length you want -- our completed length of the banner is about 6 feet long. Once the strips are torn, you just fold them in half and loop them over a curtain rod, pulling the tails through the loop (is that a half hitch??) until it is snug on the curtain rod. I also cut out simple baptism symbols - shell, cross and descending dove from white heavy fabric (2 of each), and sewed them together to make them a little thicker. The kids painted over top of the symbols with white glitter paint. Once dry, we'll tie the symbols from the curtain rod also, so they dangle from the banner at different heights. We'll screw the curtain rod into a closet rod and place it in a flag holder so it stands up. Or you could hang it from a wall. 

The whole project took about 1 hour and that included reading the story of Jesus' baptism and spending about 10 minutes discussing the meaning of baptism. 

This was SO EASY and it is absolutely beautiful! We plan to display it in our worship space whenever we have a baptism. I'll update the pictures once completed, but here are two pictures to show what it looked like. I've made a lot of banners in my day, but this just might be my favorite!