Wrap a piece of ribbon around your fingers like this and hold in place:

Poke the top end between your middle fingers at the bottom.

Poke the other end through the the fingers at the top.

From the back it looks like this:

Tie the two ends in a knot so they hold it in place.

Wiggle it off your fingers.

Even it out and this is the front:

And back:

Not bad and it’s very easy to get a lot of bows done quickly which are completely even. It can be a bit fiddly though.

The Knot.

Take a piece of ribbon and fold the end in to the middle.

Fold the other end to the middle too:

Now grab the folded ends and tie them in a knot.

It makes an upside down bow.

Pull the ends tightly and even it out.

That’s the knot! It’s a very simple way to get a bow but the tail pieces come from different sides of the bow which I’m not a big fan of.

The Cut

This version kind of cheats by using 3 pieces of ribbon instead of one. I’ve already done a more detailed tutorial on this one so if you need instructions check out my ribbon bow tutorial here.

This is the end result, it’s the perfect shape but it takes so much longer to do.

So looking at them side by side I like The Cut the most but I think the Fork is best when you need to do them in bulk. What do you guys think?? Which is your favorite?

Here they are in the order of Fork, Knot and Cut:

I’m so weird about bows, I can’t believe I actually just wrote a post comparing them XD

I really love the one I have from Amaranth Opulent on the right and I wanted some different ones to put on all of my bags!

When I do stuff like this I pretty much just grab everything together out of my craft area and move them around until I can find things that match. It’s very scientific 😉

I made this one a while ago and then added a Bergamot charm to it recently too.

It looks pretty cute on the bag!

+10 awesome points if you can guess where the charm came from!

This is the skirt I was making.

I snipped it up and cut it into a rectangle. It’s very important to cut straight so it’s easier to roll.

So start at one corner.

Tie your thread in the corner.

Fold the hem over once around 2mm. You can make it smaller if you are confident in your sewing skills.

Fold it over a second time so the raw edge is completely incased inside.

Hold it in place between your fingers like this.

There are several stitches you can use here to keep it in place. I’ve done a basic whip stitch to show you how far apart the stitches should be. Usually with this kind of stitch you would move the needle inside the seam so the thread is completely hidden.

When you stitch you should make sure to only take tiny pieces from the main piece of fabric so the thread doesn’t show through everywhere.

Continue stitching all the way down until you reach the corner.

When you get there you should stitch to just before the end and fold the next side in the same way. If you roll them together tightly the corner will form a nice triangular split like this.

Keep going until you reach the start again.

Go enjoy your new scarf 😀

Hope it was useful and thanks for reading!

Crazy blue beads:

So let’s get in to it!

You need:

• Felt or stiff fabric for a base
• Fabric glue
• Beads
• Ribbon

Cut two long rectangles of felt. The long side should be at least half the circumference of your neck.

Cut them into a collar shape like this. I am using a traditional Peter Pan shape. Basically the inside which touches your neck is a slight curve while the outside is a really exaggerated curve which is more obvious at the front.

When the corners are put together and folded it should sit like this.

For the blue one I had a heap of blue beads I wanted to use up and because there weren’t many of each I decided to make it a more haphazard design.

The main design element was a row of these silver beads though.

So first thing to do is put down glue where the beads will be going. Make sure to use actual fabric glue, not just any glue otherwise it won’t be flexible and have the right hold.

Then stick then down 😀

Then I added a little fancy curve.

After that’s it’s really just a matter of adding more glue and filling in the blanks!

Done!

Let it dry over night.

Once it’s dry, flip it over and add ribb0ns to the back for ties.

You will need something to hold it together at the back too so my suggestion is to use one big long piece of ribbon to go around the whole thing, I didn’t have a dark piece this long so I used a couple and just glued it extra well.

Like this:

Once that’s dry (again overnight) tie it on over your favorite shirt or dress and you’re good to go!

Now for the more elegant version pearls! Again start with roughly the same collar shape. I used some thick polar fleece because I didn’t have any light felt. My stash is so random at the moment XD

My mum bought these glass pearl strings at a market a while ago and didn’t know what to do with them so I… commandeered them 😀

Because the pearls are already strung it makes them much easier to work with. I would suggest stringing any beads you want to put in a straight pattern like this. Start by gluing completely around the edge.

Continue working your way into the middle strand by strand.

Keep going around until you reach the middle. Of course, I ran out towards the end so I filled in a different design with some other whiter pearls I had.

The finished design:

Again, wait for that to dry before flipping and adding ribbon to tie it, join the back and strengthen it.

I used some cheap nylon lace this time.

And that’s done too! If yours looks a little rough around the edges like mine just give it a trim. I didn’t notice until I’d gotten the photos onto the computer XD

Quite an easy craft to do and you could make a whole lot of them to jazz up a plain shirt differently every day of the week 😀 What do you all think?

So if you’d like to make your own customisable sleep mask you need:

• Black felt
• Thick velcro
• Other felt for the letters (I’m using grey)
• Needle/thread
• Ribbon or elastic to attach it
• Lace or more ribbon for edging
• Matching thick ribbon or more felt to match.

Now we need something to cover the edges and the rest of the backing. I had some pretty matching ribbon but you could also use some more felt. So cut a piece to go above and below the velcro like this:

The velcro makes it a bit harder to work with than regular fabric so pin it all in place.

And then cut it to shape.

To hold it all together you will need to edge it, I hand stitched some lace around all of the sides. If you didn’t want to use lace you could use matching ribbon or bias binding tape. Make sure you encase all of the raw edges in the lace so nothing can come undone later.

At this point you probably want to stop and have a bit of a giggle that you’ve inadvertently created a Kanye West style shutter glasses sleep mask XD If you’re into that kind of thing you could always just stop here haha!

Now you need a way of attaching it to your head, I sewed a piece of lace on each side to form ties but you could also use elastic.

Now cut out the words you want to spell from matching felt. If you want you could also cut out several options to use depending on your mood.

Press them firmly to the velcro and you’ve got a descriptive sleep mask!

Now if the mask actually said what my brain thought when people wake me up from naps it wouldn’t be suitable for the internet 😉