DIY Wedding Drink Flags (Stir Sticks)

Yay! I'm so excited to share with you guys some of our Wedding DIY projects. First up: Drink Flags!!

As you can probably tell from this blog, I'm not a very polished DIYer. I don't have any official crafty training. I just kinda pull stuff together. This is one of my favorite projects from the wedding, because I got to teach myself a bit more Photoshop Elements skillz (PSE 10) on my Macbook.

I spent a lot of time googling these flags, and I didn't find many tutorials to help me out. I was specifically looking to make drink flags that looked like banners (triangles basically). As always, I'm sure there may be a fancier more efficient way to do this, but this way worked just fine for my purposes.

This tutorial will show you how to make the triangle/banner drink flags we had for our wedding, but you can use other shapes to make similar sorts of flags in different shapes. I'm going to show you how to make a simple banner with initials, a heart, and an arrow. :)

We are going to be working with various different "layers." Each time we create a new shape or addition, it will exist in its own layer (shown in the layer box in the bottom right box). You can tell which layer you have selected because it will be highlighted.

Step 1: Open a new 8.5 by 11 inches new file. Then Ctrl+click on the shape tool (the blue heart) and select the "Custom Shape Tool" option from the drop down menu.

Once the Custom Shape tool is selected, go up to the top left of the screen and click on the shape drop down menu (to the right of the blue heart). I chose the "Sign 3" shape.

Step 2: Draw a long wide diamond shape on the page. Imagine that this will be wrapped around a stick to form to sides of one flag. You can adjust the length and width of the shape afterwards if you need to, so don't stress too much about get the shape exactly right.

Then I move the triangle to the top left most corner of the page:

I used the paint bucket tool to make the background a different color so I can easily see the banners:

Step 3: Use the text writing tool to type out your intials in whatever color you would like.

Step 4: In custom shape tool, select the "heart card."

Step 5: Choose your preferred heart color by selecting your color of choice in the color boxes in the bottom left corner of the tool box. The draw a small heart in between your two intials. Make sure that the heart shape is the top layer so that it is visible above the text layers. You can easily move layers up and down with your mouse in the bottom left box of the PSE screen. See how in the image below the heart shape is highlighted (titled "Shape 2) and is higher than the "M V" text layer.

Step 6: Go up to the same custom shape drop down menu to the left of the blue heart in the top left corner and select Arrow 16 (or another of your choosing).

Step 7: Draw the arrow to your liking (and in whatever color you would like). You'll want to make sure that the arrow layer (seen in the screen below as "Shape 3") is below both the heart and the MV text layer.

Once that is set, you want to duplicate those three images. Soooo, hit shift+select for each of the three layers in the bottom left layer box (1. MV text, 2. heart, 3. arrow) so that they are all highlighted at once.

Step 8: Then go up to Layer, then select merge layer. That will flatten those three layers into 1 single layer.

Step 9: Next go up to the Layer drop down again, and this time select "Duplicate Layer." You're going to duplicate this layer in the file that you're already in (mine is named "stir sticks diy" below) so just hit ok. You can also duplicate layers and move them to other open projects.

Step 10: Make sure you have the Move tool selected in the top left corner of the toolbox. You won't be able to tell that you've cloned your layer until you try to move the top copy.

Step 11: Once you see your top copy layer, you'll want to move the copy to the opposite side of the banner.

Step 12: Now we're going to do the cloing game again, so shift+select the banner (Shape 1), Shape 2, and the Shape 2 copy. Then go up to layer, merge layers. That will make the banner and the original image/text and the copy alllllll one layer! yay!

Step 13: Clone It! Go up to layer, duplicate layer, and select ok.

Step 14 & 15: Move the top copy down to match up with the bottom outside edge of the first banner.

Step 16: Repeat Step 13 a couple of times.

Step 17: Once you've got several copies set, you can shift+select all of those layers and then duplicate all of them as one big group!

Step 18: Pull that whole big copy down and line it up.

Step 19: Keep cloning and moving and lining up however is easiest for you until you've got the page as full as you can. You want to make sure the edges between the banners are visible but as thin as you can make them.

Step 20: Print! Cut out with scissors. You'll want to use skewers like these for the wooden stirs.