Gifting With the Perfect Bow

Do you ever have a memory suddenly flood over you?  Does it suddenly make you feel like you are right back there in the moment?  Well, that tends to happen to me this time of year.  My grandma was a huge fan of Christmas.  As a child, it was something I looked forward to every year.  Going to her house Christmas day was a treat.  In my mind, everything is still so perfect: the tree, the house, the food, the packages.  She was a wonderful host and the love she felt for us was demonstrated even in the smallest things she did to make the holiday special.  She's been gone a long time now, but I think of her often and miss her.

One of the special things she did was her gift wrapping.  She was an absolute genius when it came to wrapping gifts.  The more elaborate the better.  Looking back as a parent now, I have a renewed sense of admiration for the time and work involved in her bow making. My wish now is that I would have taken the time to learn from her the methods she used to make her bows.  She had a variety of different ones and I'm going to share one with you today.

The first step is to wrap your present as usual.  For this particular present, I used craft paper. 

Next, I took my paper I was going to use for the bow and cut one long strip.

Then I cut it in half and each side gets 3 strips for a total of 6.

After cutting 6 strips, I fan those out and hold them together in the middle.

Staple.

With a pair of scissors, curl the paper using your scissor blade.  

Here is the bow partially curled.

You can't really go wrong with this.  If one of the curls isn't what you want, then your can curl it again.  Pull them apart and arrange as you'd like.

Here is the completed bow.

Attach to the present with a couple of rolled pieces of clear tape.

Looking good!

These bows can be done on all kinds of wrap.  You can mix and match gift wrap paper, or go with one style for both the wrap and the bow.

Enjoy and be creative!

What projects are you working on this Christmas?

XO,