patriotic hair bows

Ready to wear red white and blue?  Here is a quick tutorial for the patriotic hair bows we made this year.  I first started with some red ribbon with white polka dots.  I love polkadots!!!  Make your favorite bow.  I then wanted to make some blue curly (also called korker) ribbon to tie around the middle.

I started with some 1/4 in. dowels (can be found at Walmart, any craft or hardware store), 1/4 navy blue ribbon, and some mini clothes pins.

Clip one end of the ribbon onto the dowel with a clothes pin and then wrap the ribbon all the way around until you reach the bottom.  Cut ribbon and clip this end with another clothes pin.

The next step is to bake it in the oven at 275 degrees for about 20 minutes.  If I am just doing a small amount of ribbon like this I use my small toaster oven with smaller dowels.  You can do big batches in your regular oven with longer dowels placed on a cookie sheet.  Both will work.

When the ribbon is done it will look like this when you take it off the dowel.  I cut off three pieces to tie around each bow.

This is a quick way to finish the ends of ribbon so they do not fray.  Quickly pass the ends of the ribbon by the flame to seal them.  I use tweezers for small curly ribbon like this so I don't burn my fingers.  

Tie the ribbon around the bow and secure with a dap of hot glue. Hot glue on your favorite clip.  High temp glue guns work best for hair bows.  I used a alligator clip for these because I wanted to be able to put it on a hat or in  my girls hair.  Hopefully you can follow this ok.  If you ever have any questions please ask?

  

I think that these would look so cute with some of these star hair dos from Princess Hairstyles.  I tried some yesterday and it turned out cute but I didn't get a picture.