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Conquer Cake Decorating With This Easy Birthday Cake Flag Tutorial

Updated 10/08/2020
Tutorial to make a Happy Birthday garland for cakes

Whether it's your first birthday or your 70th, the celebrations are always more fun when cake is involved. Of course, not everyone has time to bake and decorate the perfect cake so I've come up with a super easy way to customize basic cakes from your local grocery store.

With just a few steps, these birthday cake mini-flags will make a boring cake look fabulous!

Supplies

Supplies for homemade birthday cake banner

I designed these cute birthday cake flags to fit perfectly on the rectangular labels below from OnlineLabels.com. Use with a sheet or two of the following free printable.

Each sheet has enough letters and numbers to wish the special person "Happy Birthday" with the option of adding the specific number they're celebrating.

You'll also want to grab your favorite twine, two sticks to hold it up, and scissors to cut the flag shape into the bottom.

Instructions

Assembling the flags is really easy! Here's how to get started.

Step 1

Print one or two pages of the printable on your OL1809 label sheet.

Step 2

DIY birthday banner tutorial: Fold the label in half over the string

Wrap each label in half around a piece of twine. Continue adding labels until your little banner is complete.

Step 3

DIY birthday banner tutorial: Cut the label into a pennant shape

Once all the labels have been added to the twine, grab your scissors and carefully clip the bottom of the flags to make them pennant shaped.

Step 4

DIY birthday banner tutorial: Tie the label string onto the rods

With the flags in place on their twine, tie the ends to two dowel rods. Depending on the size of your cake, you may need to create two layers of the flags (like in the pictures below).

You can see how I needed to place two rows of wording to fit the entire sentiment on one small rectangular cake. Had my cake been a larger sheet cake, I could have easily placed all the banners on one row. I actually love the way the two rows looks on my cake though!

Step 5

DIY birthday banner tutorial: Press the dowels into the cake

When your birthday cake flags are assembled, all that's left to do is press the dowel rods into the cake and enjoy!

I had to trim my dowel rods down a bit so that they wouldn't be so high off the cake, but that's a matter of preference. Just make sure that the rods are down deep enough in the cake to be fully secure. Wouldn't want the flags to fall down in the middle of the party!





DIY birthday banner tutorial: You're done

Hope you find these birthday cake flags helpful for your next birthday celebration!

For more birthday and party ideas, check out our Event & Party Labels page.

DIY birthday cake garland using labels

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