How To Make Comic Strip Garland

5 Materials
$10
6 Hours
Easy

This year I put up 7 trees in my home. First time I have gone that far but don't worry, only 3 of them are larger trees with a decorated theme.


One of the themes for my Christmas tree was something I had considered for many years. This year, being the 70th Anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip seemed to be the perfect year to finally create a Snoopy Themed Christmas tree!


For this tree, I collected newspapers for the classic comic strips to create a unique ribbon garland for the tree.

For weeks I collected the comics out of our daily newspaper. Since I only get the weekend editions, this took some time. Good thing I came up with the themed tree idea in the late summer so I had time to collect and save weeks worth of comics.


Once I had enough comic paper to work with I started making the ribbon. First I covered the surface of my table with wax paper because this project uses lots of Mod Podge and you don't want the strips to stick to the surface of your table!


I used Mod Podge for paper for this project, a craft paint brush, wax paper, and some scissors.

You want the paper ribbon to be strong so you need to create a two-ply version.


This is done by keeping the comic section as the entire folder paper and applying the first layer of Mod Podge on the inside of the pages.


Then you fold the paper closed again, smooth out the wrinkles in the paper from the Mod Podge glue, and apply the second layer of Mod Podge on the comics on the top front section of the paper.


Allow these layers to dry.

After allowing the Mod Podge to dry for the first two layers, you can then start cutting out the individual comic strip stories one line section at a time.


You will end up with short lengths of comic strips.


Since I was only using the Peanuts comics my strips were all very short. But if you don't have a preference for which comics then you can cut them out in longer strips across any comic strip as long as the boxes for the comics are the same size across the paper.

Each little strips was then turned over and the back side of the strip was given the third layer of Mod Podge for paper projects.


A few of the double layers came apart for me around the edges as I cut them out so this was also the best time to just reapply Mod Podge to the inside pages as needed.

After the back layer had dried, I flipped the short strips back over to the actual comics and started lining them up end to end to create a longer length of paper ribbon. The ends of each little strip were again attached together with the Mod Podge.


I also gave the entire top of each strip another coat of Mod Podge.


I didn't put the little strips back in the same order I had cut them out. I wasn't trying to recreate the story of the strips but instead make colorful garland with varying shades of color along the garland.


The final result is a two-ply paper ribbon with a waxy finish that can then be used for garland or bows. Or just as a decorative accent to gift packages.


Since I wasn't making a bow, I made several sections of garland about 2 feet long or more for the tree.


If I had intended to make a bow, I would have made a continuous chain of the comic strips instead.

This colorful comic strip ribbon garland was the perfect addition to my themed Snoopy Christmas tree featuring a lot of the ornaments and stuffed animals given to me since I was about 5 years old.

The hardest part of making this fun and colorful garland was waiting for the Mod Podge to dry between each layer.


My Grandmother used to wrap our gifts in the entire section of comics so this would be a great project to use Mod Podge to give the paper a shiny coating just like store bought paper.

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Donna Powell
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  1 question
  • Barbara Barbara on Dec 16, 2020

    I live overseas and getting mod podge is very expensive and hard to find. It there a diy version?

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