DIY Small Pet Banner

Looking for a fun DIY project to celebrate your rabbit, guinea pig, chinchilla, or other small pet? Check out Oxbow Animal Health’s fun DIY Small Pet Banner!

Materials:

• 1 new or lightly used paper grocery bag
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Pencil
• Untreated paper string (or other natural fiber, such as jute)
• Your pet’s favorite Oxbow hay (Organic Meadow Hay is used in this video)
• 2 Oxbow Enriched Life Natural Play Danglies
• Invisible tape

Instructions:

1. On a grocery bag, sketch the letters you want to include on your banner. They should be in block text that can be cut out.
2. Cut out each letter.
3. Hole punch the top of each letter. Ideally each letter should have two punches, but this won’t be possible depending on the letter! In this case, one punch is fine.
4. Disassemble both Natural Play Danglies so the individual natural chews are off of the natural fiber. Leave the tassels on the fibers.
5. Lay out the letters in order on a clean tabletop.
6. String the last letter onto one of the Natural Play Danglies’ fibers. Wrapping a piece of tape on the open end can help keep the fiber from fraying.
7. String on one of the natural chews.
8. Continue stringing on letters and natural chews by alternating them. Depending on how many letters you have, you should have a natural chew in-between each letter.
9. Tie the second natural fiber onto the first and cut any excess. This should result in a tassel on either end of your banner.
10. Using untreated paper string (or another thin, natural fiber), make a loop and knot it at one end of the banner.
11. Measure your string across the tops of the letters two times and add a little extra before cutting the string. This will give you enough to work with when creating hay bundles.
12. About 1.5 inches from your loop and knot, tie one small hay bundle. Make sure this is knotted tight so the hay doesn’t fall out!
13. Tie some more hay bundles along the length of the paper string. If you find the bundles are tied too far out, you can wrap the paper string around the base of your loop to adjust.
14. When you like where the hay bundles are placed in relation to the letters on your banner, make a loop and tie the other end of the string to the banner, and cut off any excess string.
15. If desired, you can add additional stability to your banner. Hole punch the bottom of your letters and use more untreated paper string to thread through the hole punches at the bottom. The first and last letter should both be knotted so the letters don’t become unthreaded. Make sure to allow this string to be lax enough that the banner can bow in the middle.
16. Remove any tape that was added to keep fibers and threads from fraying.
17. Hang up on a wall or on the side of your pet’s habitat.
18. Enjoy supervised play time with your pet!