Corker Bow Barrettes

Have you ever seen hair bows for little girls and thought, wow those are cute but expensive for something made mostly out of ribbon that will inevitably get lost? No? Well maybe it's just me, remember I am frugal. Yes, frugal but definitely not willing to give up style. So when my daughter was old enough to start wearing bows in her hair, I decided I needed to find out how to make them. That was nearly 6 years and many bows ago. They are easy and fairly quick to make and now that my daughter is older, she makes them on her own with the exception of using the oven, that I help with. I wish I could remember where I learned to make these, but I can't. I definitely can't claim that I came up with the idea because they have been around a long time, this is just how I make them.

Here is what you need:

• ribbon
• dowels or pencils, whatever you may have
• clips
• barrette blanks (found at the craft store in the jewelery making section)
• needle and thread
• felt
• hot glue gun and glue

First preheat your oven to 250 degrees, then secure your ribbon with a clip at one end of the dowel and wrap the ribbon up the dowel securing at the other end with another clip. When you have made a bunch of these, put them on a cookie sheet and bake them for 30 minutes.

When they are done baking take them out of the oven and let them cool. When they are cool you can take them off the dowels and like magic, they will hold that corkscrew shape. 

Now for how to make them into those cute little bows. Cut the ribbon to any length you want I usually cut mine into thirds. 

Next you need to heat the ends over a flame, this will make them melt slightly, preventing them from fraying.

Then you will find the middle of your ribbons and thread them onto a needle, piling them one on top of the other making sure that you are going through the pile of ribbons a few times to hold them into place. (I just have to tell you, I love photo editing software. Ha ha, you see the photo above, I had a dirty fingernail in it, yep I admit it but through the magic of photo editing, I was able to give myself a french manicure, gotta love it.)

Great you ask, now what do I do? Well, from here you can attach them to a barrette like I did or you can put them onto a clip or a pony tail holder. I'll show you how I attached them to the barrette from.

Take a piece of felt and cut out a rectangle that is about three times the width of your barrette and slightly longer than your barrette.  Then you are going to cut notches out of the four corners so that you can wrap them around your barrette. 

Take your corker bow and and attach it to the center of your felt using a needle and thread. Lay a bead of hot glue down the inside center of your barrette and wrap one side of felt onto this bead of glue. Lay down another bead on top of felt you just folded over and fold over the opposite side of felt being sure to push down hard. (I removed the center loop to put the bead down and then replaced it when I was done.) Then put a drop of hot glue on the short ends of your barrette and fold over the short tabs onto the glue. I really should have taken a picture of these steps, I just plain forgot.

Turn over and admire your cute new bows. Use your "em-agination" and make these your own, add a button to the middle, add a sew on jewel, really anything. These would also be really cute on a gift instead of a bow.