Printable Craft: How to Make Hanging Party Decorations

This tutorial will show you how to make hanging party decorations using SAFARI TIME COLLECTION and SAFARI ANIMALS EMBELLISHMENT MINI.

In our home, we have a large “doorway” between the family room and the casual dining area. It measures roughly ten feet wide. It has become a tradition for us to hang decorations in that opening for celebrations such as birthdays, anniversaries, and occasional holidays. I’ve found that I can personalize the celebrations by making hanging party decorations out of printable scrapbook supplies.

I will show you how easy it is to make hanging party decorations for a jungle themed party. These will dangle and slowly twirl with any air currents. My one-year-old, Nathan, loves these! You will need white cardstock or photo paper to print on, a cutting tool such as scissors or paper trimmer, glue and ribbon or string.

I want to make diamond shapes…or squares turned 45 degrees. To make use of as much paper space that you can, work with the squares as is. Papers or embellishments clipped to the squares can be rotated as needed.  After the squares are cut out, we will turn and hang them in the diamond-like direction.

Let’s get started. I am using Photoshop CS5.

1. Open up an 8.5×11 document. Use the Rectangle Tool (U) to create squares at the sizes that you want to use.  Holding the shift key down while dragging the mouse will keep create a square instead of a rectangle. I’m using two sizes with sides about 3.75” and 2.25”.

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2. If you want all of the shapes to have the same print, you can merge the shape layers together. Then clip a single paper over the top of the newly merged layer. You can do this by making your paper layer active, right-clicking over the paper in the layer pallet, and choosing “create clipping mask.” In PSE, use ctrl+g to clip one layer to the layer below.  To use different prints, keep the square shapes on separate layers and clip various papers to each one.  You can rotate your papers as needed.

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3. I only want each square to have a border of the paper showing and I will do this by deleting the inside area of the square. Make one of the shape layers active. Make a selection of the shape by holding the ctrl key down and left-clicking on the thumbnail of that layer. You will see “marching ants” around the square shape. Go to Select>Modify>Contract and you will have a place to enter how many pixels you want the selection to contract by. I used the maximum: 100. You will see that the “marching ants” are covering an area within the square. Hit delete. The paper you had previously clipped to the shape now only shows up as a border. Do this for each shape.

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4. Place embellishments such as these animals and jeep within the square shapes. Since I plan to hang the squares as diamond shapes, the embellishments need to be rotated. Resize them to your liking, as well.

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5. Print out your sheet. You can swap out the embellishments and print additional sets. For two-sided decorations, print sheets two at a time. Then cut out the squares.

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6. Make sure that the tops are facing the right way, and turn 3 of the squares face-down.  Put a small line of glue around the edges. Measure out a piece of ribbon or string and place it across the squares starting with the middle of the bottom square and across the next two squares from the bottom corners to the top corners, then extending from the top. Make sure to leave an inch or so between squares. Then place three other squares face-up on top of these. The string will be sandwiched between them. Press along the edges to seal them with the glue.

Image 67.  Now you can hang them from your doorways, mantle, or any other place you care to. I just used a small piece of tape to secure the string to the molding.

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We love hanging party decorations at our house. I hope you enjoyed seeing the process I used to make these. They’re fun and easy and with the printable supplies at Scrap Girls, you have so many options available.







Charlene Crowder









  1. What a great idea! I have a few doorways that would be perfect for this! Thanks for the idea, Charlene!!

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