Ever need A Small Bow & Don't Have One To Hand?
We are often asked by customers what the easiest way is to make a small ribbon bow when you dont have a bow maker to hand and have run out of pre tied craft bows.
Well you might be surised to know that these can be easily made using things found around the house!
Here's one of our solutions utilising a kitchen folk...
STAGE ONE
1. Take a four pronged folk and a length of your desired ribbon.
2. Hold the ribbon against the left hand side of the folk so half the ribbon lies across the front of the folk and the other passes across the back of the folk.
STAGE TWO
3. Take the end of the ribbon that passes across the back of the folk, and bring it to the front, pass it through the middle of the folk (between the prongs) below the ribbon that already lies across the front.
STAGE THREE
4. Pull the ribbon through tight and turn the folk over.
Take the remaining end of ribbon, bring it to the top of the folk and thread it through the top of the middle of the folk.
STAGE FOUR
5. Then taking both end of the ribbon cross one under the other and pull tight ( as if you were tying the first stag of a shoe lace.) Pull the ribbon end very tight, this will form a small knot and gather the middle of the bow leaving loops either side.
STAGE FIVE
Pull the ends as tight as you can.
STAGE SIX
6. You can now pull the resulting bow off the folk, tease your tails to create the desired look and trim them to length.
This method will give you consistent bows of the same size every time. This makes it a great way of making your own small bows for craft and project decorations.
For bigger bows, you can use bigger folks - we've even used garden folks in the past for display bows!
At the end of the day you can use a wide range of things to make your own bows. A couple of alternatives we have seen are pencils in blocks of modelling clay and wooden dowels inserted in a predrilled wooden block. These all work well and can be adjusted to make larger bows easily.