Craft hair accessories: The Hair Bow tutorial

Hello, all of my blog friends! Guess what? My weekend has had an early start! Yes, there are definite perks to working at a Christian college. Good Friday, here I come.

I have been seriously lacking in creative projects recently, so I decided that in honor of my new niece I would share one of my absolute favorite crafts to make: hair bows.

So....here are the simple steps to making adorable, professional looking hair bows for all the little girls in your life (speaking of which, I'm pretty sure every pregnant person I know is having a girl). Yes, I'm spilling all of my secrets. Feel special.

The Simple Hair Bow:
Supplies:
-Scissors
-Hot Glue Gun
-Jewelry Wire
-Fray Check
-Hair Clip
-Wax Paper
-Ruler or Yardstick
-30 inch long piece of 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon
-8 inch long piece of 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon

Step 1: Drape the longest piece of ribbon over your hand, wrapping twice so that the ends of the ribbon face opposite directions.

Step 2: Place the folded ribbon on a flat surface.

Step 3: Gather and pinch the center of the ribbon to create a bow. (Sorry about the blurry picture....I looked after I had finished the bow.) Wrap the center of the bow with jewelry wire to hold in place. Don't worry if it doesn't look perfect right away, you can pull and mess with the ribbon once the wire is in place to get it looking like a bow.

Step 4: Take the 8" piece of ribbon and fold one half over the other.

Step 5: Create a knot by pulling the top half up through the center loop.

Step 6: Place and hot glue the knot over the center wired part of the hair bow. Wrap ribbon around the back, hot glue, and trim off the excess ribbon.

Step 7: Hot glue the top of an alligator clip or hair clip and attach the hair bow. Be sure to place wax paper in the hair clip so you don't glue it shut!

Step 8: The last and probably most important step is to fray check the ends of the bow. We don't want unraveled ribbon, people. Fray check is your new bestie.

Ta-da! A cute and simple hair bow.

The 3-Layered Hair Bow (my favorite)

If you like huge hair bows, this bow is for you!

Supplies:
-Scissors
-Hot Glue Gun
-Jewelry Wire
-Fray Check
-Hair Clip
-Wax Paper
-Ruler or Yardstick
- 3, 19 inch long pieces of 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon
-8 inch long piece of 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon

Step 1: Take one piece of 19" long ribbon. Overlap as shown below.

Step 2: Pinch the center of the ribbon and hold in place by wrapping jewelry wire around the middle.

Step 3: Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for the remaining 19" pieces of ribbon. Your bows should look like this when you finish.

Step 4: Stack the 3 bows on top of each other. I usually stack them in a clockwise direction so that they don't lay directly on top of each other. Wrap jewelry wire around the center of all 3 bows.

Step 5: Repeat Steps 4-8 in the above directions to make a center knot and complete the bow.

And you should get something like this when you're done!

Love :).

The Hair Bow