Holographic New Year's Eve Garland DIY

Since the holidays are coming up fast and New Year’s Eve is right around the corner, I thought it was about time for me to do a holographic focused DIY. I’ve been loving this trend on pretty much everything (clothing, pillows, art, etc) and I figured that this time of year was the perfect way to weasel it into my DIY plans.

So, I partnered with Fiskars to try out their line of Thick Materials Punches to make a trendy holographic garland for NYE that is one part party decor and one part photo booth backdrop.

As you can imagine, having the right tools made this project super easy and much, much faster to make than if I was hand cutting stars and circles. Yay! The Fiskars Thick Materials Punches are great for thick papers and specialty items (they can even cut through aluminum cans, cardboard, balsa wood, milk jugs, and foam). So, needless to say they really came in handy for this project. I’d highly recommend ’em if you plan to tackle this DIY.

That said, here’s the materials / supplies list…

Materials:

– Fiskars Circle Thick Materials Shape Punch, available in small, medium, and large sizes
– Fiskars Star Thick Materials Shape Punch, available in small, medium, and large sizes (I used small, medium, and large sizes for both the circle and star punches)
– Fiskars Amplify Mixed Media Shears
– Holographic paper (mine which you can get on Amazon here and here)
– String
– Hot glue gun

How To:

1. Start by punching out the circles and stars using Fiskars Thick Materials Punches (in various sizes) from heavy cardstock (in my case holographic paper). You can do multiple sheets at once to save time too, FYI.

2. Once you have a whole lot of shapes cut out, start rolling out a long length of string (I think each garland strand I made was 5 feet long). Then, put a smallish bead of hot glue on the back of a star or circle (in the center) and press the string onto the glue before adding another piece of the same shape on top (right side up) create a sandwich.

Repeat this process for the entire garland and you’re good to go.

3. To create a fuller look, you’ll want to make multiple garlands and string them back in forth. This will be especially helpful if you decide to use them as a photo booth backdrop. I ended up making 6 or 7 garlands total, to give you an idea of how many it took to achieve the look in the photos.

Another way to add fullness fast, is by creating a garland made up close together strips of paper. Which we added at the end to vary the looks a bit more. You can do this by cutting 1/2 inch strips of holographic paper with the Fiskars Amplify Mixed Media Shears (which are great for all kinds of projects including thick and heavy materials – I literally use these scissors for everything). And then following the same process as step 2 but using the strips instead of punched pieces.

Here’s how the finished garlands look all together…

I know these are specifically for NYE, but since they’re essentially a version of metallic, they would totally work for Christmas too. So, I’d just hang them early and keep them up through the new year to get extra use out of them.

And then if you want to use it as a photo booth backdrop, instead of just a garland decoration, all you need is a roll of colorful paper (I went with pink). And then once that’s secure on the wall, hang the garlands and you’re ready for photos.

I feel like these would look great on a fireplace mantle or strung up on a stairway banister too, if you’re looking for some different options.