Make a Watercolor Pineapple Banner

This is a fun project. If you have kids around, go grab ’em. They’ll like this too. 

At least, they’ll like the painting and mess-making and dripping-water-all-over. For the rest of it, I’m thinking they’ll make themselves scarce.

Which still could be considered a win:win, depending on how long they’ve been out of school.

Here’s what we’re gonna do – paint watercolors all over some paper, cut it into strips, then squares and then triangles, and then glue them in the shape of a pineapple onto a woven placemat and then hang it like a banner.

Easy peasy, bright and colorful. Perfect summer craft.

Supply List

• Woven placemat – I got mine from the dollar store.
• Watercolor paper
• Watercolor paints
• Outdoor Mod Podge
• paintbrush
• scissors
• spray matte sealer (not pictured) *optional
• jute twine (not pictured)
• two clips (not pictured)

There’s no right or wrong way to do this, which is why the kids will love it. I moistened the watercolor paper with water first because I like to see the paint spread out in random shades and directions.

Add some water to your paint and then let your inner child play!

You don’t have to do rows of color like I did, but if you do, you can come up with a nice ombre looking pineapple.

I painted two 9 x 12 sheets of paper which was way more than I needed.

I kept all of the little squares though because I have another placemat and I just might make something else with them.

You’ll also need a sheet of green watercolor for the pineapple leaves.

Set your papers aside and let them dry. They will curl up on you and that’s okay. You don’t need to flatten them.

After they’ve dried, take them outside and spray them with the matte sealer. I didn’t do this and I’ll explain what happened a little further down.

Then cut the sealed colored paper into strips about 1″ wide. If you don’t have a paper cutter, go ahead an eyeball it. It’ll be fine.

Next, cut the strips into 1″ squares approximately, and then cut the squares in half, making triangles. 

Turn the green paper over and mark a few leaf shapes and then cut them out. 

Position your triangles and leaves on the placemat to get an idea how tall and wide you want your pineapple.

Then start podging them into place, starting at the bottom of the pineapple.

I found it was easier to put the outside triangles down first and then fill in across the center. It doesn’t matter, though. You can lay them out in any pattern you want. Or don’t even follow a pattern if you don’t want to! 

When you get to the top row, set those triangles aside until you position the leaves.

I pinched a slight fold in the last leaf, just to add a little dimension to the whole thing. Then glue the top row of triangles over the bottom of the leaves.

I had these little clips I’d got at the dollar store a while back so I tied some jute to each one and then clipped them to the top of the banner.

A Watercolor Pineapple Banner! 

Now . . . let me share what not to do, in the hopes you’ll actually enjoy this project, mkay?

Do not use a glue stick to glue a ton of tiny triangles onto a bumpy woven placemat.

Use Mod Podge. Just brush some on, place a few triangles down, and fill in the pineapple. Then apply Mod Podge over the top of all of the triangles.

If you do use a woven placemat that isn’t perfectly flat, add some weights to flatten the bumps as much as possible.

Do not use Mod Podge on watercolored paper without sealing it first.

Watercolor paint is water soluble. Brushing Mod Podge on top will remove some of the paint, not to mention smoosh some of that paint on places you don’t want it to be.

Actually, even with those hiccups, it was a fun project and didn’t take long to complete at all.

If I keep at it, I might actually get my summer porch done by . . . oh . . . September?

What about you? Do you decorate for Summer? What projects are you into now?

Colleen

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