I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving! The gift-giving season is here– are you ready? I’m participating in a Secret Santa this year. Although I won’t be there to exchange gifts with everyone, I’m very excited. I’ll share my favorite “bow” tutorials this week.
Loopy Bow
Try making a loopy bow with thriftyfun’s tutorial. The site includes pictures to follow along in case you’re confused.
As I made this bow, I didn’t think it was going to be that easy to make the loops. However, I didn’t think to buy wire when I bought the ribbon so I used staples to secure the loops together. I suggest you get wire because I had a difficult time adjusting the placement of the loops to make the ribbon more voluminous.
Magazine Bows
If you don’t want to use ribbons to make a bow, you can use magazine rip outs. Wholeliving and milomade each featured a tutorial for making elaborate bows. The twisting process for each strip is similar for sharp recycled magazine bows and round recycled magazine bows.
Sharp Corner Bow
Rounded Corner Bow
The most time-consuming step of making these bows was twisting each strip, especially to create the sharp corners. I put double-stick tape to connect the ends after twisting and then adjusted the twist to make the corners sharp or rounded. The rounded corner bow is easier to make.
Wrapping Paper Bow
Don’t have magazines lying around? You can use leftover wrapping paper to make a bow featured in Two Yellow Birds Decor. This is the simplest bow tutorial I’ve seen. Just cut wrapping paper into strips, curl the strips with a scissor, and tape the curled strips together.
These really are the easiest things to make (even though I forgot how to curl paper with a scissor at the beginning)!
Pompom Detail
Before I saw this post on CountryLiving, I never thought of using pompoms to decorate wrapped presents. What a great idea to use up my yarn stash!
In reality, I can’t make nice pompoms; I always end up with tied-up haystacks… I don’t know if I’m not wrapping yarn around my fingers enough times or if I’m tying the wad together too tight. I’m considering getting a pom pom maker to ease my woes. You can, of course, buy pompoms instead of making them.
Look at This!
Artist “Baku” Maeda transformed ribbons into animals for his art project, Ribbonesia. I found these sculptural animal bows on if it’s hip, it’s here via Pinterest.
Photo by if it’s hip, it’s here
These ribbons are so cool! I can tell that a lot of skill was needed to make each one. If you’re interested in purchasing a ribbon, go to sakumotton store online.
I hope these features inspire you as much as they inspired me. If you wrap your presents early enough, you can try making some of these. As always, if you have any questions, let me know in the comments!
Crafting into the sunset,
Virginia
