How To Make a Bow - EASY Step by Step DIY tutorial

Hello, I'm Jennifer with Jennifer Decorates and today I'm going to show you how to make a gorgeous bow, so stay tuned. I'm going to show you how to make three different bows today. The first bow is going to be just a four looped bow. The second bow I'm going to teach you is how we're going to use two different ribbons to make a bow. And then the third one is we're going to make a bow using a really wide ribbon, say for a wedding or a big wreath. Let me talk to you real quick about choosing good ribbon. I'm sure you know ribbon can cost $10 up to, there's ribbon that can cost $100, I know, crazy. When I choose my ribbon 9 times out of 10, I'm going to choose ribbon that has wire in it. And the reason for that is if I'm going to invest in ribbon, say I'm making an Easter wreath or I'm making a Christmas wreath and I pull it out the next year, if I have invested in a wire ribbon, then I can reshape it year after year. So it's worth it to me. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to cut about 12 inches of the ribbon off. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to use that as the tie in the middle. Now this is too thick to use as a tie in the middle, it'll make it way too bulky. So I'm going to cut it in half. Before we get started making the bow and all the loops, what I want you to do is that piece we cut in half, because it's going to fray if we just tie it, it'll make a mess. See how terrible that looks? So what I want you to do, you can use fabric glue or hot glue, I'm going to use hot glue. Just run a little strip, doesn't have to be perfect and you didn't have to cut it perfect. Fold it in half and don't quite meet the edges and then hot glue that and that's what we're going to use to tie the middle of the bow. Pull some of your ribbon out and make a loop. Your first loop is going to determine the size of your entire bow. Because you're going to use this as a pattern and one of the secrets to making a fantastic bow is all of your loops are the same size. So your first loop is your pattern. Take a look at your tail and see if it's as long as you want it to be. And we're going to cut it at an angle later. So kind of keep that in mind, you lose a little bit of the look of the length, but this looks good to me. So I'm going to continue on, I'm going to twist it so that riding is going to be on the outside and I'm going to make my second loop. Then you take a look at it and it looks the same to me. So I'm going to go start my third one, twist it so the lettering is going to show, gather it up and you're going to do your fourth one. Take a look. Okay, I think that's looking great. Now I'm going to cut my second tail. Don't worry about the angle right now, just cut it straight across. And now take the tie you hot glued, see how good that looks in the middle? I'm going to move it just a little, I want to see some of that riding. Wrap it around, turn to the back, here's the second secret. Tie that really tight, yank on it, I go ahead and tie it in a knot, but if you're going to hot glue it on a wreath, you don't have to. And if you missed a couple of little strings, that's okay, just cut them off. Now flip it over and you kind of work with your bow and form your tails out forward and that's what I'm going to do right now. I'm going to cut my tails. Everybody has a different way of doing it, I just like to do it at an angle like that. And then I'm going to cut this one at an angle, and I like one longer than the other, that's just me. Now when you have this kind of ribbon, that when you cut it's going to fray like that, see how it does that? What you want to do is just add a little bit of Elmer's glue along the edge, and that will stop that fraying. You just use a little bit and you go along the edge, and then I just kind of take my fingers, even if it's on my fingers, and just kind of dab the edges like so. So do both of that and let that dry. Now I've got a gorgeous bow, and I'm going to use these tails to tie it on to my wreath. Now I'm going to show you how to make a bow with two different ribbons. I'm going to use a Christmas ribbon. Here's what I'm going to do different, since I'm going to use two ribbons. What I'm going to do is I'm going to overlap them while I'm making it. There's the first one. There's my tail. I'm going to do the second one, and I'm going to hold that gold over that like that. Form the next one, twist, form the next one, and I'm going to do it again. And I'm going to do four loops today, but I'm going to make sure they're the same size. But you can do six. I'm just going to do four today. I don't want to bore you to death making loops. And here's the fourth one. Take a look and see if they're pretty much the same size. Now I'm going to do the same thing and cut the tail. Give me a minute and I'm going to tie it. I have tied the middle with the ribbon. I've trimmed my tails and glued them. They're actually still drying. So let me show you how to really make this look good. What I do is I pull the gold ribbon out, then I'm going to pull color, then gold, then color. On the opposite side, pull those apart. And then really once I get it on my wreath, I play with it even more. Let me show you what it looks like on the wreath. I want to show you one last bow. This is a bow that I did very similar to the ones I did for two weddings. Isn't that beautiful? And I used the extra wide ribbon from the craft store. It's wired. And to save money, because we had a lot to make, I bought a spool of very similar, it's just very similar to the wired ribbon, except there's no wire on it. It's a lot cheaper. And this is what I used to cut. See, I just cut, and I cut it extra long. I cut this about 24 inches. And that's what I used to tie the middle of the bow. You can add the tool while you're making a bow, like we do with the Christmas bow, and give a little color to your bows. Love it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Making bows is a blast to me. So if you have any questions, just leave a comment below and I'll get back with you. Please subscribe to my channel, and have a fabulous day. Thank you!