How To Make Boutique Hair Bow--1--Folding, Making 4 Loops Even.

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How to make boutique hair hows? How to make hair bows' 4 loops even?

First of all, you need to make sure every loop gets same length of ribbon.
Say you want to make a 2" wide hair bow. You need 7/8" ribbon, 13" long. Every loop has to be 2.5" long plus 2x1.5" for tail. You can take a pen, measure the ribbon and mark it. But there is an easy way, no measure tape is needed. Here is the step by step instruction.

1. Take a piece of ribbon. Fold in half. Finger press the end at point C.

 
2. Measure or eyeball 1,5" for tail, fold the end and press at the points X&Y.

 
3. Then fold in half again, press at point D&E.

 
4. It looks like this when you finish, you can't see A&B so I drew a line.

 
5. Now you get 4 even 2.5" long ribbon plus 2x1.5" tails. Please note that X, D, C, E, Y are the center of the creases. Use the creases as guideline to fold the bow.

 
6. Below are 2 basic folding techniques. a) is for plain bow and b) is for boutique bow. It's hard to tell what go over what when it is all folded together. So first time for practice, please use a pen to write those letters on the ribbon. Both side please. For example, write 'Y' as in picture, then flip the ribbon and write 'Y' on the other side (at the same point).

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a) Take your template ribbon, bring X up and put X on top of D, then bring C up, on top of X. Bring E down, under D. Bring Y up, on top of C. I also use this technique to make the butterfly and dragonfly wings.

(eBay only allow 10 pictures per guide, so I removed 6 pictures here. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see where to view those images).

b) Take your template ribbon, bring X up and put X on top of D, then bring C up, on top of X. Bring E down, between C and X. Bring Y up, on top of C.

(eBay only allow 10 pictures per guide, so I removed 6 pictures here. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see where to view those images).

Now 4 loops are even. Here comes another important step: make sure you wrap the center of the bow, not too right, not too left.

7. You need to use Elastic Thread. Not dental floss, not embroidery floss, not wire; do not sew because you cannot adjust the loops later. This will make everything much much easier. You can find it at Walmart. The brand is stretchride. $0.81 for a 30 yard roll.

 
7.5 After crease the center, use elastic thread to wrap it. It may look like this:

 
8. You didn't wrap at the center. It makes 2 left loops bigger than right ones. What you need to do is to adjust the thread. Just move it to the center. It's hard to adjust if you use dental floss or embroidery floss, but with elastic thread, it's super easy. Then it'll look like this:

 
9. Adjust the bow, fluff it up. Now you get the bow you want--4 loops are the same.

 
To be continued-- check out 'How To Make Boutique Hair Hair Bow--2

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Now you may have a lot of questions:
1. Where to purchase ribbon?
2. Where to purchase plain hair clips (alligator, snap clips...)?
3. How to make novelty hair bow clips (butterfly, ladybug, Christmas tree...)?4. How to seal ribbon ends?
5. How to remove the background of the picture so the object will 'float' in the white background?
... ...
All the information you need (Plus the missing picture here) are posted on my forum:
Hip Girl Boutique Free Hair Bow Instrucitons--Learn how to make hairbows and hair clips, FREE! Visit my "about me" page for details. Or send me an email.

Thanks.
Michelle