{Tutorial} Vinyl Tablecloth Ruffled Streamers

There’s no better place to have a picnic than under a nice shade tree. But for T’s Picnics and Pinwheels party, I wanted to make sure our shade tree was special.

The only problem was that we were battling rain forecasts for the day of the party.  Well, that and I already spent most of the budget on the picnic baskets and food.

I needed to to come up with something that would withstand possible storms, was inexpensive, and would have an awesome visual impact.

It turns out that my answer was found in vinyl tablecloths.

After a few attempts at making decorations from the tablecloths, I came up with a ruffled streamer that worked perfectly for the party.

Talk about impact!

When starting this project, I was actually hoping to turn them into zig-zag streamers, but that was just a serious fail!  So after mourning my lost project for about 30 seconds, I suddenly remembered seeing this blog post months ago from Cupcakes and Cutlery where vinyl tablecloths were ruffled to make a pretty garland. After creating the streamers, I went back and found the original post that inspired the look, and found that my streamers were actually a bit different.

How to Make Ruffled Streamers from Vinyl Tablecloths:

 

I cut my streamers into sets of four or five.  If I’d had each of these cut individually, it would have taken so much longer to hang everything!  To actually hang them from the tree, i just used clothespins on smaller branches

Hang only one color at a time, or group colors for more interest.  The look fantastic hanging from all over the place!  This technique could be so cute for other themes as well.  I can envision hanging green streamers from the ceiling like seaweed or adding them to lanterns to create jellyfish for an under the sea party; use these instead of grass skirts for a luau…or even Cinco de Mayo!  The best part?  They held up so well, that they stayed in the tree for an embarrassingly long time…surviving countless storms, and even a hurricane!