Guest Post: Charlie from Attempting Aloha

Today our guest is the lovely Charlie from Attempting Aloha. Her blog is full of great DIY decorating ideas and tutorials. Plus she's a super cute writer. So read this darling post and then go check out Charlie's blog for more inspiration.

Aloha, Simply Homemade readers!

I'm Charlie from Attempting Aloha. Today I'm sharing a post I did last Christmas on how to make gift bows out of ribbon for headbands and hair clips. As a mom of three girls, there's never a shortage of hair stuff around, but these are such a fun twist on regular bows for the holiday season. :)

I've seen a lot of homemade gift bows out there this season. I think the original tutorial came from How About Orange:

I saw these back in November and made a few out of magazine pages and loved them. Then I thought, "these would be super cute hair clips or headbands!" First I tried making them out of some charmeuse fabric, but it was so floppy. I wasn't feeling the love for it. I even attempted a couple different techniques to make the fabric stiffer (like a good inventor). Mod Podge?  A mess. It eventually dried decent but definitely not worth the hassle it was to get even one strip stiff. Heated sugar water? A VERY sticky mess that never dried! Boo. Needed a new medium, the fabric I was using wasn't cutting the cheese. Ribbon!!  And I shortened the length and used a smaller width to keep them more firm and crisp looking. So for this larger blue one I used the instructions shown on the How About Orange site (link above), but I cut the lengths to 6", 5", and 4". I think center was 2". And I hot glued them instead of stapling. I also considered stitching them, but mostly I was feeling lazy and didn't want to go upstairs to get my sewing crap out.

 Once I had the bow completed, I cut out two circes from some flannel fabric I had on hand. Felt also works great with hot glue. Put glue all over one circle and then attach it to the bottom of the bow. Put glue on the second circle, open the clip, and sandwich the top "jaw" of the clip between the flannel circle on the bow and the glued side of the second circle. Underneath should look like this when finished:  (but more centered...leave me alone..)

The smaller ones were cut out of 3/8" ribbon at 5", 4.25", and 3.5". The smallest was still 2". This time I made a headband. I used the same 3/8" ribbon and wrapped it around an old lame-o Disney princess headband and hot glued the ends down. Still attached the flannel circle and then sandwiched the headband between two flannel pieces. This particular one I did two small bows side by side.

Thanks for having me, Amanda! If you have a chance, I'd love it if you'd come by my blog for a visit. Aloha and Mele Kalikimaka, Charlie Attempting Aloha

Charlie, these are adorable!! Thank you so much for sharing. Here's a little peek at the fabulous things you'll find at Attempting Aloha: