Friday 7 October 2011

Guest Post: Ribbon Hairband Tutorial

Thanks to lots of my lovely blog readers, I've got lots of fun guest posts scheduled for the upcoming weeks - hurrah :)

(I still owe a few people an email, but hopefully I will have got back to everyone by the end of the weekend - please bear with me!)

First up: a fab no-sew hairband tutorial
, from Emma McCann who originally designed it for the Brighton Craft Guerilla blog.

Emma says.... "I'm a freelance illustrator, but a crazy-keen crafter, too. I'll try my hand at anything, but I particularly love screenprinting, knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing and baking. I try to blog as often as I can about illustration, crafting, eating large amounts of tea and cake and many other random things! For just over a year, two friends and I have been running Brighton Craft Guerrilla which is part of the larger Craft Guerrilla group. We use the Brighton Craft Guerrilla blog to document our crafty shenanigans and post up anything interesting we find on our travels."



Hello all. This is a really easy-peasy guide to making your own bow that you can add to a hairband for instant glamour, or attach to a clip or a pin to give any outfit a little bit of va-va-voom. What makes it so easy is there are no real measurements involved, other than you need about 1.5m of ribbon, and no sewing. All you need is:

- 1.5m-ish of ribbon. I used a 22mm wide grosgrain ribbon, which I think works better than normal, silky ribbon as it is stiffer and has more weight to it.
- Scissors.
- Glue. I use Guterman HT2 Textile Glue. This stuff is a real craft-box staple as, not only is it super-strong, it will stick absolutely anything. I use it for gluing clip frames onto purses and it's just fab.
- A hairband of your choice. The selection at Claire's Accessories is pretty wide and has the bonus of being inexpensive.

What You Do:

Step 1: Decide how many loops you would like to your bow. I went for four, with an extra piece to wrap around the middle. Cut your ribbon - as many loops as you want, plus one extra – into strips, each one slightly smaller than the one before it; check out my photo:

Step 2: Glue the ends of each strip, bar the smallest, together so you have a collection of gradually decreasing loops.

Step 3: Squish the centre of each loop into itself and secure with a blob of glue on the inside.

Step 4: Layer your squashed loops up on top of each other with largest at the bottom up to smallest on the top, and secure together with a dab of glue between the flat area of each one. It's best to leave it to dry for 15 minutes or so before you continue.

Step 5: After you've let the glue dry for a bit, take your remaining piece of ribbon and glue it at a right angle to the bow on the bottom side of the largest loop.

Step 6: Wrap the ribbon around the centre of the bow once. Then grab your hairband and position the bow on top. Now wrap the ribbon around both the bow and the hairband. This will create a slight loop on the bottom which is what makes your bow so flexible in its style. You may not need the whole length of the ribbon, but wrap it around at least twice to make it nice and secure.

Step 7: Cut the end of the ribbon off at an angle to prevent fraying, and glue to the underside of the bow.

Step 8: Ta-da! A fabulous hairband. Leave it to dry for about half an hour (or over night would be ideal, just to be on the safe side) and away you go.

You'll see that looping the ribbon around the band means it's not fixed to it in any way, so you can move it up and down the band as you wish for different looks, or slide it off completely and attach to a pin for a fantastic brooch that would look amazing pinned at the neck of a buttoned cardi. Experiment with different ribbon thicknesses and lengths and the number of loops for whole new looks.
Go out and impress!

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You can follow Emma's adventures in illustration and crafting over on her blog, Illustration, The Universe and Everything
 
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4 comments:

M(aniek) said...

Super :D chyba sobie zrobie takie cudo na lato :D

Manu said...

cool, i like hairbands with ribbons :)

aimee said...

Great tutorial i love bows. thanks for sharing xxx

Anonymous said...

I love this and it's so simple. I'm definitely going to try this, I'm always looking for ways to use up my ribbon.