Monday, February 18, 2013

Super Easy Spikey Bow Tutorial

Sunday morning as I was getting Miss O ready for church, I put her in the cutest little grey and pink dress. It was super sweet. Her hair needed to be pigtailed up and out of her face, but when I got done, I could only find one pink bow. We know that we can not go out of the house without a bow! I mean what a terrible catastrophe!

So I had a little less than a half hour to be in the car on our way and thought, I will just make her some. Now I will side note here that I buy bows from a few different boutiques around. I can not even attempt to do beautiful loopy boutique bows. What I ended up with was a spikey bow.

 
You can use different widths and types of ribbon for this, I just happened to have some thin silver ribbon on hand. Ruffled Ribbon would be cute too, if you can find it. I may just make some instead.

Want to know how to make an easy Spikey Bow?


Materials needed :
Ribbon - 12 strips roughly the length of how big you want the bow to be. My smaller piggy bows were about 3 inches long
Needle
Thread - any color- wont be seen
Small felt
Attachment clip - barrette, alligator
Hot glue
Pearl- beads- jewels- buttons (Optional)



Tutorial --

Take a needle - the thicker and longer the better. Thread it but double the thread. (sorry no picture, but just thread it and pull both ends to the bottom and knot it)

Then start with you strips of ribbon. I cut 24 pieces because I was doing piggy bows. Don't forget to quickly heat seal the ends or they will fray. I didn't do this because I was in a hurry and didn't want to go find our lighter. Towards the end of the day I realized the importance of it. So don't skip this step.



Pick up a piece and pinch it in the middle.


Put your needle through the pinched part and slide your ribbon to the bottom of the needle, however keep it on the needle.



Continue with all 12 pieces, turning them various directions.



Once all pieces are on the needle, slide them all at once on to the thread. Its best to have a flat surface to for them to press against.

Thread your needle back through the top through all the pieces back down to the bottom. Pull taunt, but not too tight.
 

Cut the needle off and take your two threads and tie them in a knot a few times. (I think I did twice)


Place a small dab of glue on the back and attach a small piece of felt.

Attach your clip of choice to the felt.


Turn to the front and you can be done, or do as I did and add an accent. You can add a button, jewel, pearl, etc. The sky is the limit.



Wa-lah!!!


Easy peasy. I whipped these up in less than 30 minutes.





What do you think? You like? The variations can be endless. If you want fuller bows, just cut more strips or use a thicker ribbon. You can always cut the ends of each ribbon to change the look as well.

Definately going to be making more of these, so easy! But I will leave the beautiful boutique bows to the experts. :)

Until next time,

Keep Calm......and Spike it up!

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Keeping it Real....plus a Gender Reveal....

So most of you know I am not only a mom to 2 going on 3 kids, but I work full time as well. Sick kids up throughout the night leaves momma awake too, and then they fall back asleep right before the alarm goes off for work.....SNOOZE BUTTON! Let me tell you, days like today really have me frazzled. You know, like the teacher off of the magic school bus.


Thankfully I keep the frizz to a minimum but these two jobs can wear a woman down! I am thankful for the strength and grace the Lord gives me everyday to make it. No, my house isn't near spotless. No, I am not sure where Olivia just found that half eaten cookie from the other night. No, there is never an end to the amount of laundry that has to be done.....all the while trying to take care of my gems and being at work by 8:00am in the morning. Maybe I need to be a little better organized. I mean with a another one coming in July, we got to get on a better schedule.
By the way....we had our ultrasound at 18 weeks yesterday.......


Like my fancy cake? It was pretty delicious if you want to know. :)


The pink strawberry cake revealed that its a Girl! So there will be lots of fun things to make! Why do girls seem more fun to sew for than boys? (of course I have been requested for a spider man shirt and a ninja costume....yes sir... I will try and get right on those).


Anyway, Rant complete. When I started this blog, it was for different reasons. I wanted an outlet that I could use for posts just like this. We all can be a little transparent and say...Hey, I pretend like I got it all together, but I am just a normal person too! I also wanted to be able to post the cute things that I have learned to make by other amazing blogs and share them.

This blog has been great therapy for me at times even if it just simply because I had 47 page views from the UK on that ONE day. This may be frivolous to many but with only 70 or so posts in less than a year, I saw today I am getting ready to hit 3000 page views. Some posts of course get hit multiple times a day. Especially hair plopping or my Project Failed Runway post. It makes me happy to know that people are reading it. Comments are ALWAYS a bright ray of sunshine too.. :)

So I leave you with this today....I am gonna be more real. One of my greatest strengths is trying to be a perfectionist. One of my greatest weaknesses is trying to be a perfectionist. I am just going to be me, and for once know that it is good enough.

Until Next time....

Keep Calm.....and Carry On....