How to make a Bow out of Ribbon

The holidays are coming and if you're thinking a great way to impress is making homemade ribbon bows for the gifts you'll be giving this year, you're right. They look much better than pre-made bows and they are actually cheaper than the pre-made bows.

Once you master the art of ribbon bows, you can easily make a bow in about 30 seconds. I know this is possible because I spent my college years working retail at a children's book and toy store and we were the gift-wrap masters. We also needed to work fast!

Here's instructions for making a variety of different types of bows, from fancy big bows with satin ribbon to the very quick & easy curly bows made with curling ribbon.

For gift wrap bows, you can use ribbon between 1/2 inch and 1 1/2 inches in width, adjusted to the size of your wrapped present. You'll want to cut off about 3-4 yards of ribbon to make it. Essentially all you need to do is keep looping the ribbon back and forth while scrunching it under your thumb until you have as many loops as you want. Then you take another piece of ribbon and tie it off around the center of your loops. However, trying to make a ribbon bow by just reading instructions is difficult, at best, so I've included some videos that show people actually making bows.

This first video is exactly how I make my ribbon bows for presents. If you have a small box, use thinner ribbon. One additional thing that I do that the creator here doesn't mention,is that once I attach the bow to the package I take a scissors and run it swiftly down the tails of the bow. This makes them curl better.

You can also use curly ribbon to make bows. Personally, I don't think they look as good, but sometimes you work with what you have at hand and for some reason I always have curling ribbon lying around. These are the easiest gift bows to make because you really aren't making a bow at all. You're just making the curly ribbon even curlier. Just run your scissors blade down the ribbon.

The following two videos show step-by-step how to make big Ribbon bows using wired ribbon. Personally, I think bows this size would overwhelm any gift you are wrapping unless you are wrapping a refrigerator. However, ribbon bows also make great home decorations during the holidays and big ones frequently look great on wreaths as well. So follow these tips to make some monster ribbon bows ! You can hang them on your front door with or without a wreath.