Technique Thursday - How to Make a Puffy Bow

Recently I've had lots of questions about my "puffy" bows that I make pretty often now. The idea came to me to use these bows on cards and other 3d items, because when I was a young girl my mom taught me how to make bows like this when wrapping Christmas gifts. Yes, we made bows to go with every gift! I remember being so impressed with myself when I finally got the hang of it and my bows turned out like mom's :)

Here are the instructions to make my "puffy" bows. I hope you will be impressed with yourself when you finish too :)

Wrap ribbon of your choice (the Seam Binding ribbon in the Holiday Mini catalog works the BEST!) around your hand 5 or 6 times:












Fold the ribbon loop in half like this:













Snip away the corner on each side like this:



















Tie the ribbon in the center using Linen Thread (tip: leave long tails if you are going to want to tie your bow onto a package or card when you're finished):


















Begin by pulling one loop and twisting it down and around. The next loop you'll pull up and twist to the opposite direction. Basically you're twisting each loop in the opposite direction so the the loops puff up.















Here is the bow after half of the ribbon loops have been twisted. Once you've come this far, you will carefully twist the loops on the other half of the bow, without squishing the half that's already finished.




















Here is the bow when it's finished. You can either tie it to another ribbon using the Linen Thread pieces that are still attached, or cut the thread and adhere it with mini glue dots.

















If you decide to give the puffy bows a try, we'd love to see your creations! Just link to your project below :