How to Make a Perfect Bow with an Easy Hack!
When making headbands, learning this simple hack for how to make a perfect bow makes all the difference! Check out how to make a hair bow out of ribbon for other styles. This post contains affiliate links.
To teach you how to make a perfect bow, I’m gonna teach you a stupid simple hack that gives you much more control over the outcome.
It also allows you to make really cute two-tone bows, but you can also use it to make single-tone bows that look like they were actually tied.
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A few notes:
- Because these aren’t real bows, you hot glue the middle and they can’t be pulled open.
- If you’re looking for a strategy to actually tie a bow, this is the wrong post for you (my sincerest apologies). This tutorial for how to make a perfect bow is for cheaters like me (or clumsy fingers like mine).
- You can make these in large for gift boxes, etc, but I’m showing you this tutorial on a hair bow.
Just a little background: I was sick when pregnant with Princess A and can’t really say I ever totally got back to myself. But I needed a crafting outlet, so low key crafts won me over.
I’d sit down with a bag of ribbons, leather scraps, and other “ribbonables”, some elastic, and a hot glue gun, and just make piles and piles of bows. I’ve made more bows than Princess A can really wear – and shared some too.
There’s nothing quite like a little bow on your princess’s bald head, and so I’m sharing a few simple strategies for making them.
This one is a basic bow – two loops, with two tails sticking out. And that bit in the middle holding it all together…
What you need to make this bow
- Hot glue gun – I LOVE this one. Quality does matter when using a glue gun in durable crafts.
- Ribbon, lace trim, or leather scraps – or anything you can cut into ribbons
- Scissors
- Something to put it on, such as elastic, alligator clips, or nylon headbands
- Ruler
How to make a perfect bow – the cheat way
1. Cut two pieces of ribbon to size. I prefer to cut extra and trim. So, the length of the small one should be about 3.5- 4 times the thickness of your main ribbon. The other should be about four times the length you want your bow to be, with a little extra just in case. So for a two inch bow with half-inch wide ribbon, I cut one almost 2-inch length and one nine-inch length.
2. Lay your long ribbon flat and Bring the two sides to the front, crisscrossing them over each other as pictured.
3. Center your small ribbon on top of the X, gluing it in place with just a dot of glue.
4. Flip it over. If you’re attaching an elastic or clip, place that in position.
5. Glue your small ribbon shut in the back, trimming any extra.
You’ve successfully faked how to make a perfect bow! Congrats!!
