Trendwatch...Pennants

I had written a trendwatch article for the March, 2007 edition of a UK mag that has subsequently ceased publication. I thought that you all might be interested in it. The article was never completely finished or proofed, so here it is in it pseudo-complete state. The artwork was completely done though and is some of my favorite stuff that I have done to date. So, enjoy!! BTW, there is one big pennant shape that is one segment of a wall pennant banner that says LUCKY.

BTW, the overall theme of the article was Luck/St. Patrick's Day and the art is all attached at the bottom of the thread.

The article:

Stand First –
As we design, we naturally use geometric shapes…squares, rectangles, and circles, but there is another really fun shape that you may be overlooking. This shape provides some excellent creative possibilities for your papercrafts projects and that shape is the triangle used for pennants or flags.

Main Text –
The pennant or flag shape is a variation of the traditional triangle. The popularity of this shape came about centuries ago when banners were created by hooking several of these shapes made from fabric together to create an eye-catching hanging vignette. These banners were hung in marketplaces and vendor faires to catch the attention of people as they walked past.

Today’s crafters have reinvented this process to create fun signs using paper that are used to decorate creative spaces and other areas within the household. These signs are perfect for celebrating special occasions, thoughts, or people. Because of their hanging shape, they work well over doorways, mirrors, hooked to the handles of furniture pieces, or simply hanging on the wall. The Lucky Wall Pennant is a good example of this. This sign would be appropriate to hang in a child’s room the week of a big exam or football game to wish them Good Luck.

The fun thing about this project is that you can customize it based on who the recipient of the good thought is. You simply change the number of pennant shapes to correlate with the number of letters in the word that you want to display and it is very simple to change the look from masculine to feminine simply based upon your paper choices. You can create a very simple pennant using only a couple of papers and colours or you can get very extravagant with your embellishments and attachments to create a pennant that is truly a work of art.

Other Applications –
Because we have seen the increased use of these flags, it has become a natural progression to begin to see this same shape applied to other areas of papercrafting. The shape is a natural fit to draw attention to certain areas of your project; much like an arrow draws attention to whatever it is pointing at. The shape also works well when combined together to create decorative borders and effects to help frame out the central portion of your project as you see on many of the cards created here.

Making it Happen –
For the all of the projects in this article except for the wall hanging, pennant shaped stamps were used (Stamped in Ink’s Elegant Pennants), but it is very simple to create this shape without the use of a stamp. You simply need to determine the overall size that you want the pennant to be when it is finished and cut this size as a rectangle. Find the center across the bottom and cut a straight line from this point to each of the top corner points. You now have your pennant/flag shape. If you desire a more finished look to this pennant, simply draw the outline using a dark or coloured pen and then trim close to this line.













BTW, all the pennant stamps used in this article are from Stamped in Ink and Sue has posted some gorgeous new sneak peeks of the new stamps coming out on her blog so go check them out!!!
smiles,
Christi