How To Make a Simple Ribbon Bow | Tutorial Step By Step | Bow Tips and Tricks

Kim has to make 180 bows a week for our signs and she does it quickly, affordably and efficiently. And I'll show you how I make them right now. What is up? Welcome back. Do you like to do a build it or make it? So do we. And we have a new video each week. This week give me a bow if you got your funky bus because we're going uptown, downtown and right over to Bowtown. That was pretty good. Yes, we are going to Bowtown this week. So I've been promising for days, weeks, months, years, years. I'm going to go years on how to make a bow tutorial. And because I'm having to make right now, month of November is like craft show season. So I am making about 180 bows a week. And so I thought this is the perfect time to show you how I do it. Give you some tips on what kinds of ribbons I use, the materials I use and how we make them so quick and efficiently. And we'll show you right now. Step one, we're going to gather all of our supplies. We needed some bus fare for the double Dutch bus. That's to get us to Bowtown. That's to get us to Bowtown. I joke with Bowtown. If you've watched any of our Tuesday lives or pretty much most of our videos, we talk about bows, we're talking about the Bowtown, Bowtown, the mayor of Bowtown. Yeah, I'm the mayor of Bowtown. So my little corner of the workshop room is all ribbons. And that's my little bow station, restricted area. And we call it Bowtown. Now, I'd love to show you a Bowtown looks like, but it's not really a Bowtown right now. More like a bow tent town, maybe a bow shanty. It's a bow shanty. Yes, it's a bow shanty. And so I have big dreams for that space. And I'd love to do a video coming up here, you know, when it's in the winter, maybe late December, early January, where we can fix that. Yeah. So I can really show you what a good bow station looks like. We do have our rolling ribbon cart. We made that video. So go back and look at that. And I'm totally using that still. It holds approximately, what did we say? Two hundred and forty rolls of ribbon on that cart now. That's pretty good. Yeah, it holds a lot. And I can switch it by the season, the front side of it's one season, the back side's another season. It's great. Flip it around. So, but I will show you some of the things that I use and the types of ribbon I use and the materials I use. So let's go ahead and get started on what supplies we're using. So we're going to need four types of ribbon. Each bow takes four coordinating ribbons, as Garrett is demonstrating, and some burlap ribbon. This ribbon is six inches wide or six inches tall and 24 inches wide. I cut a full roll of ribbon, this burlap. The links to everything that I'm talking about will be down below. So I'll take that full roll and I'll cut them at 24 inches and I'll just have a stack of burlap sitting there. We also use these scissors. Yep, these are ribbon scissors not to be used on anything else. That is correct. That is correct. Even though I find them everywhere and out in the warehouse and everything. We purchased these on Amazon. I get them in this little three pack. They're super affordable. I'll leave the link for these down below. We also use these zip ties. I use an eight inch zip tie and a four inch zip tie. Bigs and smalls. Bigs and smalls and we get these at Lowe's. You can buy this. These are a thousand and this is twelve hundred for the small in these bags and this is great and it's super super affordable. I got these on clearance for what was it maybe less than ten dollars or something for this bag of a thousand and something like that. It was super super affordable so definitely go check out the bulk quantities because you'll find them on sale. As a matter of fact, I was just in Lowe's and they were back there in the clearance section again so go look for them. Yeah, scoop out your Lowe's. The other thing about the ribbon I want to share is that you always want to use wired ribbon. These are all wired. They're different kinds but they still have wire so this is a kind of a loosely weaved wired ribbon. This one has some stitching on it. This one is a satin ribbon and then this one is the glitter mesh ribbon but they all have wire. If you don't use the wire then your ribbon is going to get a little bit floppy like this. You're slapping around your sign. This is a grosgrain ribbon and you know if this one gets a little bit wet, well first of all when you put it together, it's going to be lazy looking. Yeah, a little bit of a lazy bow. It is. Yes, it will look like a lazy bow and if it gets a little wet sitting on your door, it's going to flop even more and that's not, that's not the look you want. It will look very sad. Very sad little ribbon. You also don't really want to use the see-through ribbon, this organza. This one does have a wire in it and I will in a pinch maybe use it but it just doesn't have enough color and it doesn't really add any additional sparkle to your project. That's an up close kind of sexy. Yeah, it's a close sexy. I don't want anybody that close to my front door but we're gonna, yes, you're gonna be looking at your door rounds from a distance and so you want a little more color to it than what an organza ribbon has. Something that'll catch your eye from a distance. We sometimes use this burlap ribbon too. If I want to do a nice neutral one, I can get this burlap in this zigzag. I get it in a polka dot and then there's another like a french shaped pattern and I can give a real, this burlap in white is a real neutral looking ribbon. It goes with any kind of greens or burgundies where you can't find a matching color. Blue jeans. Yeah, it's like the blue jeans of ribbon. Yeah, yeah, it is like the blue jeans of ribbon. It goes with everything. That is so true. Very good. The other thing, let's talk about how we put these ribbons together. Well, it's not assembly yet but a little bit about the types of patterns that I use. So like I said, I always put a glitter in my ribbon. I typically put this on the bottom and then I put maybe two solids in the middle. Where the base goes, your basics. Yeah, these are my, it's called an everyday basic ribbon and then this is the kind of ribbon you can buy in bulk. So I will buy them in 50 yard rolls. So you can see the greens here, the reds. This is also the kind of ribbon you'll use for your hanger. You don't typically use a satin ribbon for a hanger because it gets real thin and skinny looking and it doesn't have, it just gets a little, the knot gets small. Yeah, this one has a little more. They feel like like cheap hotel sheets. Yeah, maybe it feels like a cheap hotel sheet. This is the kind of ribbon that you're going to want to use for your hangers. And what I do is for the hanger, I try to have the hanger ribbon coordinate with one of the ribbons in the bow. So for this one that I'm showing you right now, I would use maybe the green or the red as a hanger and then I would put the green or the red in the bow. I also always add a pattern. So a sparkle, two planes, and some sort of pattern. This is the kind of ribbon I might get at Michael's or any of the craft stores, Joann's, Hobby Lobby, that kind of goes with the season. And you can always get these on sale. These will typically come in this 30 foot roll or maybe even this one has 18 feet on it. I will buy a polka dot in bulk. I just happen to have a small one. I love your polka dot. I do. So I'll typically put, these are the basics of building a ribbon. Step two. We're going to make all of our cuts. What finger you got in there? Like caught it with your third finger? Yeah, I was just cutting. That's how I hold the scissors now. So one of the things that I use when I go to cut my ribbon is a little like dowel holder here because this will hold up to six rolls of ribbon. I usually will put my bases on the bottom. Sure. Whatever. And these kind of stay here. So if I'm working on Christmas, this red and this green will stay here pretty much for the month while I'm working or two months, however long it takes me to get all my Christmas signs done. And then I'll put these smaller rolls on top. So like, here's that Christmas pattern. It's going to go right here. There you go. That ribbon will travel. Ready to go. All right. And I already shared that we cut our burlap. I usually buy this in a huge roll, cut it down to 24 inches and have a whole stack in front of me. And if I'm doing a large stack of signs that are all the same, let's say 12 dog paws or 12 Merry Christmases, I'll go ahead and cut my whole stack of ribbon. I'll lay out all four of the ones that I'm going to use and go ahead and cut 12 of each. And these are actually cut at nine inches. So I'll put a little mark on my table, which I already have here. It's there. The great thing about this everyday linen ribbon that I'm using right here, it actually has lines so I can keep a nice straight line. I'll pull these and I'll go ahead and just keep cutting until I have a stack of 12. Super efficient. And then when I go to dove, okay, you're not even there. The next thing would be to dovetail the ends. So we don't want to leave these square ends and we're going to do each end, but you can do multiples at a time. So here you can see I've got a stack of, what do I have here? Six of them could maybe even do more than that. How far can you go Kim? If you have a nice sharp pair of scissors, which I'm not confident about these right now, they're nice and sharp. You can cut all six of them at one time. This is another way to speed things up a little bit. There you go. Or if you're doing one, like I just happen to have one of these, you can fold a ribbon, fold it in half again. And to dovetail, you always want to cut inside to outside. I'm going to show you that again. So here's your ribbon. We're going to fold it in half. We're going to cut inside to outside. Do the other end inside to outside. Does it need to come to a point? Yes. Do you see that this one didn't quite come to a point? Yeah. Did your OCD kick in? Yeah. There you go. Is that close enough? It's close enough. Close enough Kim. It's not, it's not quite still. It's close enough. Now that we have our stacks of ribbon cut, you want to look at the ends because they may fray. Sometimes these, even though they're bound, they may fray a little bit. Yeah, they kind of look like that. You see that? Yeah. Bobcat ears. And you got two options. I don't, I don't seal every single ribbon that I use, but sometimes like this one's just been sitting there and it started fraying and I haven't even used it yet. So you can see that this ribbon is definitely going to fray if you put it away. Spontaneous fray. Yeah. Like seriously, it's spontaneous fray. Yes. This one too. Look at it. Whoa. That one got in a fight with somebody. I hate to see the other guy. If you know that you have ribbons that easily fray, then you definitely want to seal their ends. So you can cut it off like that. Looks good. This is a really loose weave. So if you see a loose weave like this, you know it's going to fray. So like I said, you can do one of two things. You can use this clear washable Elmer's glue and put just a tiny little bit on your finger like this, and then just touch the edges lightly. And you can put a little glue and that'll help seal your edges. You don't want to put too much glue on there because it will leave like a clear plastic. Well, it'll look wet. It'll dry and look like it's wet. And that's not necessarily what you want. The other thing you can do is you can of course burn the edges. I've seen this done a million times since I was a kid. And then this is really quick and easy to get yourself a little lighter and just hit each edge very lightly, very quickly. Can you see how that melts? Of course you do. Here, hold it yourself because you can guide it. It's a quick one. Yes. See it melts a little, but you don't want to spend too much time because it'll... Yeah, that was quick. That was easy. And now you can feel that it's sealed. Yeah, it's got a little ridge on it. And again, I don't do it to everyone. Like this one right here, I can see is about to start to fray a little bit, so I might hit these. Can you hit them as a pack? No, I don't think so. I think if you did that, they might melt together. You can try. I haven't really done that before. Yeah, I think it works as a pack. All right. So maybe if you know, you have a stack of this one and you know it's going to fray, go ahead and hit the whole stack together. Yeah, I like the lighter method. Yeah, I bet. I'm certain that you do. Step three, time to assemble them. All right, we have our stacks. I've got a Christmas bow. I've got a typical black and white bow, and we have our burlap. Now, I just informed Garrett that he was going to make one with me. I thought I was just an innocent bystander today. He's very disappointed he had to do something. All right, get your burlap. Roger. Now, watch me first, and then we'll have you try. So with your 24 inches of burlap, you're going to, what is this? What fold? What kind of fold? Pamphlet fold. Pamphlet fold. I think that's a good one. You're going to pamphlet fold these. So you're going to bring your left side in and your right side in. And then you'll shake them all about. And you're going to overlap them. This is probably like five inches. The length, once you have them folded over, is about nine inches. Okay. That's what looks good to me. And you can just eyeball it. You know, once you kind of do a few of them, you'll get the gist of what nine inches looks like. And then you're going to put your little cut piece in the back. Roger. And then this is where the bow starts. This is where the magic happens right here. This is where the alchemy comes in? Yes. So you're going to pinch the the middle of it. The pinching. You're going to pinch it so that you have one hump in the middle. That's right. My lovely bow humps. And then you're going to take and you're going to make a hump on either side. So you're going to. So my hump in the middle shouldn't be too big. That's right. Not too big. You're going to gather that on the top and gather it on the bottom. All right. I gotcha. My inside hump is still a little bigger. So you have three humps. Almost. And I will shortly. Okay. Three humps. That's right. And you're going to hold it with your first finger and your thumb. We each have a bow tie. And now this is the other little kind of trick part of it. My fingers are shorter. Your fingers are longer. This should be easier for you than it is for me. I'm going to hold the bottom of it with my thumb and then I'm going to use maybe this first knuckle of my first finger. I'll put it in like the crook of my thumb. No. Nope. That's not what I said. You're going to use the knuckle of your thumb to hold it. Okay. And then the first knuckle of your first finger to hold it. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. So then I said it right. First knuckle of your thumb. First knuckle of your first finger. And that's because you're going to use this first finger to hold your ribbons when you stack them. My clamp. My clamp and finger. Yes. It's going to be your clamp and finger. So let's start with your glitter on the bottom. And we're going to. This one's going to have two humps. So the way to easily do that is to put your index finger right in the middle. Use your middle finger and your thumb and pinch the top and bottom towards the middle. Okay. So did you do that? Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. Now you're just going to lay that right there and use my clamp and finger. Yes. It's going to be horizontal. Now you're going to get your everyday ribbons and you're going to do those. You're going to bring it together. Now you have this as horizontal. Now you're going to make an X. So put your little gather in there. Tuck it under your finger. Under my clamp and finger. Under your clamp and finger. That's perfect. You're doing great. You're like really listening this time. There's part of your X. I'm going to do the next one and I'm going to make the X on the other. Finish the X. I'm going to press cross at the other direction. Is there an easier way to pinch these things? Like my guy doesn't want to come up in the middle. It doesn't come up in the middle. You're going to leave your finger. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Perfect. Okay. Perfect. And now you're going to take your accent ribbon. Pinching this guy too. Pinching it the same way. And now you're going to place this one horizontal across the front. Like you did the bottom one. Okay. There you go. Yeah. That's great. I'm halfway to bowtown. Halfway. Now you can make bows. All right. Now we're going to use our large zip tie. This is where it gets a little. This one takes a little practice. You can get it. It's going to take a little practice. So here's what we're going to do with this. So we're going to take the end of the zip tie. Make sure it's facing down because you're going to need to attach it here in a moment. And then you don't want to just wrap this around right in the middle. You're going to have too much zip tie on either end. You're going to push the end of the zip tie towards your, what would you say, the side of the bow by your thumb. Put the end of the zip tie down by your thumb. Okay. And then you're going to use your other thumb to push it around. I use my middle finger and then I wrap it around with my middle finger on my left hand. Now I'm going to flip it over. It's going to be in the other hand. That's right. It's like way off. You can try it again. This is where it gets in. I mean I got it. You got it. You've done a shift. Now I just zip tie it. Yes. I'm going to use the little bit. Wrap it around my middle finger. And now I should have just the knot or the end of the zip tie. A little, I don't know what you zip tie slot end. Close by and then all this up at the top. And I'm going to tuck this in and pull it. Now before I pull this super tight, so I hope you haven't pulled it too super tight yet. This is when you add, so I right now before you kind of clamp everything down, that's how you straighten out your bow again. Make sure your X is still there. Your center piece is still there. It's kind of still centered on your backer. Yeah. Now you're going to go ahead and add your little zip tie in the back. Okay. Again this is kind of right between the two humps in the back. Should be easy to add because you don't have it real tight. Now you're going to put your thumb. I'll show you how you want to tighten it. You're going to put your thumb on the top piece here. Yeah. You're going to put two fingers on the back. Gotcha. And then you're going to twist this. So this is something I had to learn over time. If you just pull that zip tie tight, it's going to twist your whole bow. So I usually will take the large zip tie and pull it to the side. Then I'll pull a little tighter and it starts to wrap around. And now I've kept all my ribbons in the center. Did you do it? Yeah. Yeah. I got it. That's it. And that's it. Yeah. There you go. Now we'll go ahead and cut the remaining piece of the big zip tie. Just cut it close to the little... You can leave it on like it's a clip tie. You can, yeah, make it a clip tie. Yeah. This is what I'm wearing to work next week. Look, my ribbon is fraying. I didn't do this one. Yeah. Let me let you do it. Yeah. Took care of that, didn't it? Yeah. What is this? What happened here? I don't know. I was cutting fishtails. That was a terrible dovetail. All right. Now I fixed it. Okay. So now I'm going to do it again. Just me. And I'm going to show you how to do this rather quickly because I want to show you how quickly they can be done in order to do 180 bows in a week. Okay. I have all four stacks in front of me. You'll just fan fold it. You'll eyeball nine inches. Doesn't have to be perfect. Go ahead and do your humps. You're going to add your glitter. I'll add the red, green pattern. Make sure you're paying attention and you don't attach your presents on upside down. Large zip tie, small zip tie. Then I'm just going to crank it down. And then I usually throw it over to somebody to tie it on. Step four. We're going to add the hanger. Hang them, hang them. Hang them if you got them. Hang them high. Hang them if you got them. All right. So for the hanger, your hangers are going to be about 18 inches. I usually will just measure them the width of our sign because we know we make our signs 18 inches. So this stretchers across there. Again, I will pick a hanger that has, that's one of the ribbons inside the bow so that they do coordinate. So I have this buffalo plaid inside this dog bow. We're going to use the ribbon slots at each of our signs. All of our signs come with these ribbon slots in the top. And I usually hang mine off of the table like this so the ribbon slots are hanging over because you're going to need to get to the back a little bit. And I stand mine up for filming purposes. All right. And we're going to pamphlet fold the end of our hanger ribbon, kind of like we did with the burlap ribbon. So I'm going to fold the left side in. I'm going to fold the right side in over the left side. Then we're going to shake it all about. Then we're going to push it through the hole. And now that we have a little hanging over the hole, I usually take mine and just make a little knot back there. Tie the knot. And you want to keep that knot as close to the end as you can. So yep. Start. Yes. Yes. That's great. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Pull it back through. Book fold or pamphlet fold the other end. Push it through the ribbon slot. Tie a little knot. Keep it close to the end. And this is absolutely the easiest way we found to hang our signs. We didn't start this way. Garrett's genius of the ribbon holes came a little bit later, but it's been great ever since. The layers we have out, like this one's a little bit, well, both of those are a little hefty. Yeah. Both of these are kind of heavy signs. They've got multiple layers and the ribbon holds them really well. Just one little knot in the back will hold it. Now let's attach our bow. Now you can hang your bow either on the right side of your ribbon hanger or the left side of your ribbon hanger. But you definitely want to make sure that your presents are face up. Oh, you never cut the back I didn't. I was using it as a bow tie. Oh, that's right. Now make sure that your presents are face up. Oh, yours are going. Yeah. Yeah. They're face up. I mean, when the kids help me, they always are face down. Whenever it is, it's face down and you kind of want to pay attention to what side you put it on. So for this, uh, welcome dog paw, I'm going to put it on the right side. Since I have so much weight of the sign or the, a lot of the detailing is on the left side of the right hand side. I'm going to put the bow on the left hand side. Opposite side of the stuff you got going on. Yeah. And Garrett's going to do the same cause he's got that big scene to have. Now you're going to use your little tiny zip tie. That should already be in place. That should already be there. Mine wasn't. And you're just going to lay your bow right on the front and just tie a little zip tie in the back. Now my tip is to pull it nice and tight and then push your bow way down to where it meets the ribbon hole. If you do that, then your bow is going to sit up a little bit nicer. If you leave your bow up here, then it just flops. All right. Then you're going to floppy bow, a sad bow. Yeah. So I suggest, and you can move these around a little bit. Yeah. Push it down low and snip off the end of your tiny zip tie. I'm going to use these same scissors and that is it. And that is that. Bowtown. We gave you the instructions to get to your own bowtown. Yeah. You're going to have to show me your bowtown. Step five, time to brand them. We're not just bows. We're also branding. Well, I just wanted to kind of remind everyone that when you send a little sign out into its new home, you want to make sure that you have your branding on the back of it. You always want to make sure you either engrave your logo on the back, but that's hard to do because then you have to flip every one of them over and engrave the back or you add some sort of branding. We used to put stickers on the back of each one, which was great, but pretty expensive. So we recently switched to these little tags. We use these as our price tags as well. This has a little QR code, our website address and our logo and our logo on it and some soap apparently. Yeah. Slippery little sucker. And then we put it right here between the ribbon holes. Yeah. So we're going to add, well, you're going to put a little glue on there, a little glue on here. I want them to be able to take it off. We're going to add a little accelerator because I do this after we add the bow. We're going to add their little branding on the back and then put it right in the cart. So we usually flip it around. It really is. Woo. Accelerators. Serious business. So I'm doing this kind of as I put them in the cart to take it. And with that accelerator, look, it's not going anywhere. Done. And the QR code really works. We've already tested it. Yeah. So if they want to buy another one, because what happens is folks almost always want to start with an everyday all season sign, like a generic welcome. And then when the next season comes along, they're like, oh, I love my door round. Where did I get that from? Yes. Oh, it's on the back of the Yeah. And look how classy that looks. You know who else is classy? Our patrons. We love all of our patrons. They're all very classy, just like our branding, of course. Big thanks to all of our patrons and Kim for knocking everything off the table. Clear the table. Get ready for the outro. Well, we're about out of time. I have to go pack up trailers so that we can head over to another craft show. So we will see you on Tuesday where we're going to do a test cut Tuesday and then again next Friday. We're going to do it, build it and make it again. And I'm not going to balance it. Nope.