The Saga of Symbaroum

This has been sat on my desk for a few weeks. I made some banners using a Microsoft PowerPoint (yup, not Photoshop, power point is easier if all you want to do is basic shapes and clip art) and printed them a few weeks ago. However I got too excited by painting the barbarians it kind of just sat there. I decided I had better get them done before I lost the sheet with the banners. This is the first time I have tried to do this and although the results are ok, I think there’s probably a few things I might do differently next time. I’ll talk about those in a little while.

The basic method is to cut the banners out and then glue a square of tin foil to the back of one half of each one. Then cover the surface of one half of the banner with PVA glue, leaving the bit that goes around the flag pole free of glue; when I designed the banner I actually placed a narrow rectangle in the middle that would be the bit where it attaches to the flag pole. Fold the banner over and press the two sides together, being careful not to press the flag pole side (referred to as the hoist) together. When the glue has dried you can now roll and crease the flag to give it a more natural look, the tin foil will help it to retain its shape. For this I rolled it around the handle of a large paintbrush and then manually added a few bends a creases at the corner. When you are happy with the shape paint the flag with PVA glue (I actually use Matt Mod Podge for this), again avoiding the hoist, and then leave them to dry. Once the glue is dry the flag will be more rigid.

Ok, you will have to be very grown up about this next bit. No smutty jokes please, it was difficult enough to write this as it is.

What you should have now is a flag with a sort of paper tube at one edge (the bit that is hopefully completely free of glue) that you can just slide over the flagpole. For this I placed a small blob of PVA glue at the bottom aperture that way as you insert the flag pole, it will carry the glue with it and coat the pole, ensuring that the entire flag is glued. There’s an obvious limitation with PVA glue in that it takes a long time to dry, so to hold the flag in place I added a small dab of superglue to the top and bottom of the flag where the pole and flag meet which held the flags in place until the PVA glue dried. At this point you can also press the hoist edge of the flag together as this will also assist with adhesion.

So, what would I do differently? Well, I found that after I glued the two halves of the flag together, it’s wasn’t as flexible as I would have liked. I have seen some videos on this and it might be because I used neat PVA glue, a recommendation is to use watered down glue instead. Or I could try curling the flags while the glue is still wet, although I suspect this might also cause the flag edges to de-align. I might also be tempted to glue the flags to the poles before coating them in PVA because that way if the banner doesn’t look quite right, I can still adjust it whilst it’s in position before finally adding the PVA to set it in position. That aside though, I’m actually quite happy with these and they really do add so much character to the army.