How to Create Bows for Your Gift Wrap

Kitty O’Neil: I love wrapping presents but what I really love are the bows Jennifer O’Neil: They are like the icing on the cake. Kitty O’Neil: And I my kind of bows is the shoelace bow. It’s a classic and when I make it with wired ribbon that’s stand ups off the package. To get started you want to take your ribbon and cut off enough to wrap around your present. So to do that just lay your present on top of the ribbon that’s enough to go over around one but we want to have enough to tie some loops. So we’re going to make a loop and the loop. We also want two tails, that’s a tail and that’s a tail and now we cut the ribbon. Next we want to center the package on the ribbon. I need to find the center of the ribbon, it’s here and I'm going to lay the package on top of the ribbon. Now you can tie the ends up and I tie a normal knot like you tie for you shoelace then I tie a loop. I go around it and through, and pull out the second loop. There’s the basic shoelace bow. But this is wired ribbon and that is a trick. With wired ribbon, I can form the shoelace bow into a puff ear bow so it’s nice and pretty. Give a little twist so it sits on there straight and we’re almost done. This end looks so nice. So we’re going to cut those in a shape that we called the blue ribbon. Fold the ribbon in half and cut it on an angle. It looks like a blue ribbon and there’s your perfect shoelace bow. The Multi-Loop Bow is the perfect fancy embellishment for any package and it looks like a million bucks but it’s really very simple to make. Jennifer O’Neil: To make our fancy multi-loop bow, the first thing we want to do is cut a piece of wire. The wire will hold the bow together and we'll also use it to attach it to the package. Then we’ll take ribbon on a spool and go ahead leave it on the spool. There’s nothing to measure, take a little bit off to start and now we’re going to make our bow. The first thing I want to do is pinch the end of the ribbon so the ribbon is going away from you. You want to pinch it between your thumb and your index finger, and twist. And for this bow, it’s all about twist. Twist, make a loop and you're going to pinch it again between your thumb and your index finger and twist. We’re going to twist again in the other direction, pinch it between your fingers and twist. And you basically keep doing the same thing, make another loop, and pinch between your fingers and twist. You can make the loops about the same size of your bite or you can start gradually making them bigger as your bow gets bigger. When we get about the size of the bow we want. We’re going to make one big loop and knots to make our tails. So we’ll grab that loop and twist of course, take our scissors and just slip it off. Now we’re going to snip that little loop so there are tails but we’ll make them nice and tidy in a minute. And now we’re going to hold the whole bow together with this magical piece of wire. To do that we’re going to find the center where the thumb is, place the wire through, grabbing at the other side and pull it nice and tight and now we’re going to twist the wire. So now we want go hide and shape it a little bit but we do more shaping when we put it on the package. We want to pull our tails down to the bottom, take the wire and slip it underneath our knot, and simply wrap the wire back around itself underneath the bow. And then we’re going to snip those ends, now we’re going to flap our bow out just little bit more here, there that looks gorgeous. It’s so easy to make. All those motions are just one after the other and you’ve got this gorgeous bow. Another bow is the classic crisscross. But how many times have you tried to do that crisscross and ended up with tiny little end to one giant ribbon end. Kitty O’Neil: Or you go to crisscross the ribbon so you do not have enough to meet up with the end. We’re going to start by taking the end of your ribbon and eye balling it across your package. This is how much we need to get halfway around and then you need to double that or to triple it over around the back, same for the lengthwise at the package once and then around the back. Give yourself a little slack and some room for you knot and that’s we’re going to hit the ribbon. Next we want center the package on the ribbon, like for crisscross you actually start with the ribbon on the front and then take it around to the back, crisscross the ribbon and then put the package back over. See how we have enough ribbon. Next we’re going to tie a simple knot. If you tie your knot behind the bottom ribbon, it makes a nice equal little pinch ribbon. Now, all you do is take these two ends and tie at the end. Next we want to cut the ends of our ribbon and I'm going to cut this one diagonally here. This is a beautiful ribbon for a masculine package because it does not have a feminine bow. Jennifer O’Neil: It also a good one if you're in a pinch and you don’t have a whole lot of time.