Today I am sharing a SUPER easy tutorial on how to turn bulletin board borders (you know, the kind teachers use in classrooms to trim bulletin boards) into swaggable garlands.

I always find darling borders in the teacher supply section of the dollar store but could never come up with anything to do with them. But then I saw this one which was made up of little buntings and I knew I could use it to make a swag.


The problem is that the border is straight, and I wanted to make it ‘swaggable’ so the first thing I did was cut the segments into individual pattern repeats.
 There were fourteen 24-inch border segments in one package, I only needed to use 4 of them to get enough pieces to make a garland long enough for my mantel.
Then, just like my paint chip or vellum garlands I ran all the pieces through the sewing machine to form the garland:

The final product:

Of course, because this was a patriotic bunting border, I used the swag on my 4th of July mantel, but the possibilities are ENDLESS on how you could use them.

There are so many themes you could use them for holidays, seasons, birthdays, baby showers.. you name it.  And even though I found my border at the dollar store, you can order them online or find them at teacher supply stores with almost ANY subject or theme.

Here are some other examples of borders that would make darling garlands:
Holidays:

Halloween:

 Seasons:


Sports: 


Or as a garland for a birthday party:
Cupcakes:

Cat in the Hat:


Eric Carle (Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear) :

 Owls:

So which one is your favorite?  What else could you make?