paper bow tutorial | Scarlet Calliope

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bow template, card making, cricut, Cricut Storybook Cartridge, Heidi Swapp, LOveBug Creations, Paper bow, paper bow tutorial, paper crafting, paper crafts, stephanie eaken, Sugar chic

Happy Birthday, Stephanie!

Today is my friend Stephanie’s birthday so I made her a Birthday Girl card!

I used “Sugar Chic” from Heidi Swapp and let me tell you I am in love with the colors and the patterns in this stack! I used a gorgeous ribbon from Lovebug Creations, this one is called “Purple-Dise”.

Before I start creating any of my projects, I always go online to see what other people have been doing and get some quick inspiration. I discovered that there are cute paper bows available from Heidi Swapp, but my local craft store only carried the paper stack and no embellishments, so I had to improvise. I sketched out a template to make a Paper Bow and you are welcome to use it and share it! (As long as you don’t sell it!) Template is at the bottom and here’s the tutorial!

How to Make Paper Bows

1. Print out the template. You may want to make the bow larger or smaller using your scanner or printer settings, depending on your project. The template will make a bow that is approximately 3″ wide x 1.5″ tall. You can either cut your scrapbook paper down to 8.5×11 and send it thru your printer, or print the template onto plain white copy paper. If you print directly to your scrapbook paper, print the template on the blank side so that you don’t waste any cute paper with the frame and title printed on it. If you want to get fancy, cut the bikini top shape out of one paper, and cut the remaining pieces out of a contrasting paper.

2. Cut out the pieces that look like a bikini top, two triangles and the small rectangle. (The doodle on the bottom is so that you can see what it looks like when it’s complete.) If your paper is single sided, you’ll want to cut 2 pieces of bikini shaped paper at the same time, and layer them wrong side to wrong side. If your paper is double sided, you can skip that last part.

3. Add a dot of glue (hot glue works really well for this!) or a glue dot on one end of the bikini and bend it gently towards the middle, but don’t allow it to fold, you want it to stay puffy. Bring the other side of the bikini in to the middle and give it a small dot of glue. If you use liquid glue, use a clamp, paperclip or clothespin to hold the bow in place while the glue dries. Or, use a small snippet of blue painters tape.

4. Bend the small rectangle around the middle of the bikini and secure it with a drop of glue on the back side.

5. Now add the tails to both sides using a drop of glue. They can flare out to the side or hang down, it’s up to you! Allow to dry.