Make decorative hair bows using grosgrain ribbon and other embellishments.
Making your own hair bows offers the flexibility to express your individuality and personal sense of style. You can create hair bows using components from craft and discount stores. Whether you are making a bow with grosgrain ribbon or covering a barrette with jewels, producing your own hair bows is a creative way to add a designer's touch to your hairstyle.
Selecting Hair Bow Components
There are several hardware options available for making hair bows. You can embellish a plain plastic or metal hair bow available from a discount store or you can start from scratch with a barrette from most craft stores. The type and size of hardware depends on the style you are making and the embellishments you plan to add. Plastic or metal hair combs and clip-style hair bows are suitable if you plan to attach silk flowers, ribbon bows and other lightweight embellishments. Metal barrettes work best if you plan to decorate the hair bows with heavier objects such as beads or crystals.
Embellishments
The types of items you can use to embellish hair bows include ribbons, beads, vintage jewelry, buttons, flat-backed rhinestones and silk, fresh or dried flowers. Decorating hair bows is subjective, but there are a few tips you should keep in mind when selecting the embellishments. Make sure that the hair-bow base is wide enough to fit the embellishment, but not wide enough to protrude beyond the edges of the decorations. For example, gluing a silk flower blossom to a plain hair bow is not challenging, but the overall effect is not as attractive if one or both ends of the hair-bow base are visible. Also, remember to match weighty embellishments with sturdy hair bows. A thin, plastic barrette will not support a row of heavy-vintage jewelry without tilting. A metal barrette with a wide base works best to support heavy components.
Attachment Tips
Attach the embellishments to the hair bows using hot glue, viscous jeweler’s glue, wire or soft monofilament line, which is a beading material similar to fishing line but which knots better. Hot glue will hold all lightweight embellishments, but it’s best to connect heavy decorations with viscous craft glue, beading wire or soft monofilament line. Make sure you allow the glue to dry before wearing the hair bow. Beading wire is thin, but it can interfere with hair strands if you use it to wrap around a section of the hair-bow hardware that touches your hair. Metal barrette forms have a separation between the underside of the top section and the part that connects with your hair.
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