Bow Solutions

I grew up with the tradition of opening twelve days of Christmas presents on the days leading up to Christmas. My mom always did a beautiful job wrapping each present. It made the whole thing special. The first few years that I started the tradition with my kids, I found that, I never had time to wrap the presents the way I wanted and usually ended up not even wrapping them. Pulling something out of a shopping bag doesn't have the same effect. So last year I came up with the idea of making pretty bows and saving them to use year after year. After each gift was opened, I picked the bow up and threw into a zip-lock bag for next year. It actually worked I was thrilled when I pulled out the bows and simply had to do a little fluffing. I only had to cute one new strip to tie around a gift, the rest already fit the boxes I had.

I'm going to try to explain what I did. First I cut a strip of ribbon long enough to wrap around the box and over lap.

When I made my bows I left a long strands of wire to fasten.

I then wrapped the long strands around the ribbon on the box and twisted it tightly. If the ribbon wrapped around the box get loose, you can then pull the ends of the ribbon in opposite directions to tighten them. I then use the extra wire to secure a tag to the bow.

I'm hoping these bows will last a few years.

I was inspired by Just a Girl for this next bow. She uses yarn to wrap presents that are traveling to another home. Yarn doesn't get ruined during the trip. I've been frustrated with flattened and deformed ribbons during small rides across town. Especially when presents are stacked like my hubby does.

When I saw her pretty presents I thought of the old pom-poms. I made when I was little.

It took me like 30 second to make this pom-pom. I made it the old school way, by wrapping yarn several times around cardboard.

This would be great for shipping presents too.