Frugal Friday: How to make a bow

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In case you can’t tell from my Christmas home tour, I love to use bows for holiday (and fall) decorating. I used to think the perfect bow was super hard to make and for several years, sweet talked my mom into making the one for my tree. Finally, I asked her to teach me and it was way easier than I realized. It takes some practice, but once you get it down, you can knock these out in no time. And ribbon can be a really economical way to decorate and change out seasonal decor. I use burlap for fall, a cute pastel plaid in the spring and Houndstooth for football! Hobby Lobby and Michael’s often have great sales on wired ribbon and I stock up when they do! This year, I bought the snowflake ribbon that’s on the banister and landing from the Dollar Tree. The best part is that if you store it properly (I use paper towel rolls or save the rolls the ribbon came on), you can use it year after year. I’ve had the plaid ribbon that I used in the kitchen for probably 5 years and my mom used it before me.

Ribbon and Burlap bow on the living room Christmas tree

Materials:

Floral wire
Wired ribbon or tulle (I find these two types of ribbon work best for this technique)
Materials for bow making

Instructions:

Step 1: Decide on how large you want the bow to be – smaller bows will needed tighter loops; larger bows will be a little looser, but bigger.
Step 2: Before you cut, start by looping the ribbon in circles. This gives you the layers that you need. For me, smaller bows usually get 6 loops (3 on each side, not including the end pieces) and larger bows get a least 8 (4 on each side). It depends on the thickness of your ribbon too – with tulle or thinner ribbon, you can do more loops. Thicker ribbon can start to get tough to work with the more loops you add – for example, my mailbox ribbon and I were not friends this year!
Step 2: make loops with the ribbon
Step 3: Cut a piece of floral ribbon with a long enough “tail” to twist around the ribbon and leave some for attaching to a tree, garland, mantle, etc. Eyeball the middle of your ribbon loop and twist the floral wire around the ribbon creating two sides.
Step 3: Flora wire around the middle
Step 4: Fan out the loops as much as possible until you get the look you want. This can take some time to get it right – you might want to start with thinner ribbon as that is definitely easier to work with and pull the loops where you want them to go.
Step 4: Fluffing the bow

Another option for this one is to use a small piece of the ribbon to make the bow – this works better when you’re attaching it to something smaller, like a gift package. I use this technique on almost all of my gift wrapping with tulle ribbon.