A Fun and Festive Guide to DIY Hair Bows

The perfect gift for any little girl – or anyone who wants to wear them, for that matter – are DIY hair bows; not only are they just precious, but they can come in dozens of different colors and styles for different occasions and preferences. Unfortunately, buying multiple bows can become expensive very fast – that is, if you don’t make them yourself! Homemade bows can cost you as little as one dollar per item, and they’re easy and fun to create. Not only this, but they can be used for a variety of different purposes; along with the obvious hair bow, you can also use them for various crafts, like hairpins and little “bow flowers” to decorate your clothes like buttons.

To create your own flower buttons using hair bows, you simply need felt, hot glue, a button, a needle and thread, a snap clip, something like a fabric cutter to cut the felt and 1-2 yards 3/4 rickracks, which are essentially squiggly or zigzag strands of fabric useful for trimming on articles of clothing or curtains. After you have all of your supplies together, just follow these easy and quick instructions:

Cut your felt into a circle about two inches across
Wrap your rickrack around the outside and stitch each bottom loop
Continue to wrap the rickrack around until you reach the center of the circle of felt, stitching as you go; it should look somewhat like a flower, now
Hot glue the button to the middle of the flower
Cut another circle of felt, the same size as the first one
Using a pair of scissors, cut a hole into one end of the second circle of felt
Put the snap clip into the hole, then close it
Put hot glue onto the back of the flower and then attach it onto the top of the snap clip
You’re finished!

Another way of using DIY hair bows in arts and crafts is to make little butterfly bows; these are equally adorable, even more simple and easy, and absolutely perfect during the Spring season. All you need are ribbons, sheer ribbons, a hair clip, a dowel, and hot glue.

Open your nearest window and breath in the glorious Spring air!
Cut two 8.5 inch ribbons, and another two 6.5 inch ribbons
Line a hair clip with ribbon, then take your 8.5 inch piece of ribbon and fold it in half
Pinch it in the middle; that way you know where the center of the ribbon is. Then, glue the center of the ribbon to the hair clip.
Take the ends of the ribbon and loop them around and glue them down
Do the same thing with another piece of ribbon that’s 6.5 inches long
Take sheer pieces of ribbon and glue them over the opaque ones
Take about seven inches of ribbon and wrap it around a dowel, or a very short pencil
Put it onto a baking sheet and bake it at 275 degrees for around 25 minutes
Cut off a one inch piece of ribbon and then cut the edges off, then hold them over a flame to make them curl up
Glue them onto the top of a clip
You’re all finished!

Bio

This guest contribution comes from e-commerce store The Ribbon Retreat. They supply arts and crafts products like fold over elastic, elastic ribbon, as well as even basic tools.