Make A Reusable DIY Birthday Backdrop On A Budget

I love a good DIY birthday backdrop and have been known to make a few in my day. But one thing I haven’t loved about DIY party backdrops is that they’re one and done. We make one to fit our party theme and then into the trash it goes. So when my eldest came up with an idea to make a reusable birthday backdrop that was budget-friendly, I jumped on it.

DIY birthday backdrop made with fabric strips tied to a dowel hanging on the wall above a console table in a dining room

Over-the-top birthday parties are stunning. They’re one of my favorite categories on Pinterest, with the decor being my favorite. From beautifully styled baby showers with gorgeous photo backdrops to substantial balloon garlands, painted birthday backdrops, and right down to the mini chalkboard easels identifying the bevies. I am here for it.

While I often aspire to organize over-the-top birthday parties for my kids, I try to rein it in, mostly because it feels so wasteful. I give myself a budget, make my dream plans and list, and then cut it down to a few parts that make the party special. I also try to prioritize items that are reusable instead of single-use. Think thrifted dessert plates vs. paper plates. Hence why I love this birthday banner so much.

My wish for this birthday backdrop banner is for it to become a special moment in our kids’ lives and they remember it when they’ve long outgrown our home. Here’s to them looking back and recalling that special banner we made together that was there for their 7th birthday, 15th birthday, and even 25th birthday when they came home for a visit. Not that this banner is an heirloom quality piece but we make it a family heirloom by attaching special memories to it.

A DIY fabric ribbon background in red, yellow, orange, blue, green, purple, and pink colors hanging on the wall above a console table

We’re coming into celebration season at our house. And by birthday season I mean that over the next month, we celebrate my birthday, our wedding anniversary, Colby’s birthday, Merle’s birthday (the family dog), and Bea’s birthday. Poor Rowan is the one outlier with a winter fette. So with the Campbell family celebration season about to commence, it’s about time I shared the tutorial for how to make a DIY birthday backdrop.

Also in full Instagram vs. Reality Shame, we still have the birthday banner hanging in our dining room after making and using it for a February party. Hangs head in shame. At this point, we might as well leave it up for our birthdays.

How To Make A Birthday Backdrop

Let’s get to it and make the birthday banner. Before we get started, I’ll share the size of our birthday banner. That way, you can adjust your supplies to fit your space.

Birthday Backdrop Size

We made our DIY birthday background to fit the space above a console table in our dining room.

The backdrop dimensions are 54″ high by 8′ wide.

We also made our backdrop by attaching two 4′ dowels because we thought it would be easier to store two 4′ sections instead of one 8′ banner.

Birthday backdrop making supplies including a stack of colorful fabrics, fabric cutting mat, sewing ruler, rotary cutter, and rotary cutter

Supplies

Tools

How Much Time To Make The Birthday Backdrop?

โ€‹It took us about three hours to make this birthday backdrop from the first cut to the final pictures. Although I did do this with our kids. If you’re flying solo, I bet you could make this quicker.

The last step, adding a “happy birthday” banner took about 15-30 minutes. That includes finding a free printable banner, printing it, cutting it out, and stringing it up in front of our backdrop.

Total Cost

All in the cost of this project was $79.89

The most expensive part was the fabric. We chose the cheapest, most basic, solid-color cotton fabric at $3.99 a yard. But since we needed 21 yards it was a whopping $83.79. Thankfully, I found a 20% off your total purchase coupon from JoAnn Fabrics and used it to get the fabric cost down to $67.

The other materials were the dowels at $4.88 each, about $10 for both. The hardware was less than $5 with one dowel screw for $1.13, and two small L brackets for $2 which came with the screws.

DIY backdrop for birthday parties made with wood dowels and fabric strips, hanging on a wall above a console in a dining room

Choosing Fabric

The first step was choosing the fabric. We used solid, bright colors to keep the project budget-friendly while ensuring the colors would age over the years. The basic cotton brights are some of JoAnn Fabrics’ cheapest offerings. I let the girls pick the colors and love the combo they came up with.

Other color schemes would be beautiful as well. Perhaps light colors for baby showers, pinks and purples for girlie girls, or (if it was up to me and my moody color-loving soul) some dark shades of green mixed with some light blue.

Cut The Fabric

I opted to go all in and cut all the fabric at once. It was more efficient to cut everything first, hang the strips over the dining room chairs so they wouldn’t wrinkle, and then hang them all at once.

First, fold the fabric so it fits your cutting mat. I have a bad habit of cutting in the wrong direction the first time so make sure it’s folded and oriented correctly to get long strips of fabric.

Cutting pink fabric into strips using a fabric cutting mat, sewing ruler, and rotary cutter

Place the fabric on your mat and using a sewing ruler, decide how wide to cut the strips. We opted for 2″ wide. Then cut the fabric in straight lines with the sewing ruler as a guide for your rotary cutter. Butt the cutter right up against the ruler.

The first time I cut the fabric I cut 16 layers at once because of how I folded it. While it worked, it was hard to do and my rotary cutter barely made it through. I refolded and cut through 8 layers of fabric at once which worked much better.

In the end, we had 20 to 22 strips of each of the seven colors. With a few colors, I wasn’t as great about lining up the edges so the last strip was a little too small.

Attach The Dowels

Next, we attached the two 1″ x 4′ dowels. First, measure and mark the center point of each dowel. Correctly mark the center or the dowels won’t line up.

Using a 7/32″ drill bit and a cordless drill, pre-drill the end of each dowel where they will connect. Make sure to go straight down into the dowel. If not, the two dowels will connect at an angle instead of straight.

Pre-drill holes into the end of the dowels using a cordless drill to attach the two dowels together

Then replace the drill bit in your drill with the dowel screw and screw the dowel into one of the pre-drilled holes. Drill it into the dowel about halfway down.

Attaching dowel screw to a cordless drill before screwing it into a dowel

โ€‹Next, screw the second dowel onto the exposed end of the dowel screw. Then you have one long, 8′ dowel.

Hang The Dowel

It is much, MUCH easier to hang all the fabric strips to a dowel rod that’s already hanging. We tried attaching the fabric while the dowel was on the table but it was hard.

We did something unconventional to hang ours, which probably won’t work for anyone else’s space. You see, we have a large, old mirror hanging above the dining room console table. We permanently attached two L-brackets on top of the mirror so we could set the dowel and our backdrop right on top of the mirror.

Dining room with a large mirror hanging above a console

This works great except for when you accidentally, totally not on purpose, or out of messy house overwhelm, leave the banner up for many many months. Note the sarcasm. Then the banner warps and the ears ends hang low. The next time we put it up, we’ll probably hang it a different way.

I know our method won’t work for everyone, but you may be able to attach it to a wall or make a backdrop stand. There are plenty of DIY tutorials out there for making a backdrop stand.

Tie On The Fabric Strips

Now tie on the fabric strips using a basic, overhand knot in the middle of the fabric. Don’t be fooled. I have precisely no knowledge of knots and had to Google knot names to write this tutorial. Did you know there are more than 21 knots out there? WikiHow to the rescue and the knot we used is the third method.

Tie strips of fabric onto dowels to make a DIY birthday backdrop

This is a great step to enlist the help of your children. Rowan, whose seventh birthday we were celebrating, helped tie on the fabrics.

We didn’t tie them on with a specific pattern in mind but tried to space out the colors evenly. We worked one color at a time attaching about three-quarters of the strips.

Once we had gone through all the colors you could see sparse spots. In those areas, we picked underrepresented colors to fill in the gaps. In the end, we used all the fabric strips we had cut.

Attach A Happy Birthday Banner

The original plan, after creating our DIY birthday backdrop out of fabric strips, was to attach a gold, glittery “happy birthday” banner that we’ve had since Rowan’s first birthday. It’s the Meri Meri gold happy birthday garland. But when I brought it out, it was WAY too small. The letters got lost in the busyness of the fabric.

In a down-to-the-wire, game-time decision I quickly found a printable birthday banner, printed it out on card stock paper, cut it out, and strung it up with jute.

DIY birthday banner background made with colorful strips of yellow, orange, green, pink, blue, purple and red fabric hanging in a dining room

It looks okay, but I sense an upgrade in our future for the upcoming onslaught of birthdays in the household. I’m leaning towards large, glittery gold!

Bring On The Birthdays

I love making our own decorations, including birthday backdrops, for birthday parties around here. I enjoy it immensely and love it when the kids want to get involved.

Fun fact, my birthday is the next one, and both girls, unprompted have been making me cards and decorations. I have successfully done my due diligence as a crafty mom and turned them into mini-mes.

Here’s to the birthday party season! One of which is a MAJOR milestone birthday. Any guesses as to who or what the number is?! Hint hint…HE is dreading it. Stay tuned!

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