Make a Florist Bow

" To create a professional-looking bow, try this. Now, don't let those pretty bows intimidate you. It's really a lot easier than it looks. You're just looping and twisting the ribbon. Now, the easiest ribbon to use for this bow is wire-edged ribbon, and I love this stuff because it gives your bow more body and it's a little more sturdy, so it's really easy to work with and then you're gonna need a piece of thin wire at the end or you can use a thin piece of ribbon if you'd like to. I'm gonna use wire. Alright! So then just determine how long of a tail you'd like, and I'm gonna pinch it right about here. Alright! And then, you're just gonna start looping. Now, I like to first form a smaller loop. That way, when you get going, you're not having this fluffy mess of loops and then what you'll do is create that figure 8, and you'll just go down like this, come up to the center, hold on to it, and then form another loop on top. Now once you get going, I like to make the loops just gradually a little bit bigger. It makes it a little more interesting, and I also like to do an odd number of loops, and I find that that makes it less symmetrical and just more interesting for your bow. And if you go to the craft store and you find a sale on ribbon, go ahead and buy a bunch of it because we've got all kinds of fun bows to make, and you can have fun mixing and matching and creating your own handmade bows. Take your scissors and you're just gonna cut for your tail right here, and then, you're gonna take your wire and just wrap it around the center where you had been holding the ribbon in place, like this, and then twist it tightly into place. It's gonna look like this florist bows that you see. Alright! So then just determine how long of tail you like and make your cut, like that. Alright! Now, you're ready for that thin piece of wire. What you're gonna do is just wrap it around the center where you were holding the ribbon in place and then just give it a few twists to tightly secure your ribbon and then you could just snip off the excess wire, like this. There! Alright! Now, comes the fun part, and I would suggest that you hold on at your tails. That keeps your ribbon in place, and then, you just start pulling and twisting and opening up your bow. This is where that wire-edged ribbon works really nicely. It just helps to stand it up on its own with a nice full look. It's more like larger loops here. Now, it looks like that. Looks pretty good! Alright! Now, what I've done over here is that I added it to my gift wrap, and I added some evergreen and some pine cones and made it look like a real nice holiday gift. So, the next time you're ready to wrap a gift, try this!"