Day 2: A Bow Bracelet - a diy ribbon jewelry tutorial

Ohh, I love this one. It is a beautiful bow, but on a bracelet, how unexpected! I originally made this bow to put on a barrette, but that just seemed too standard, girly hair stuff. So, I put it on my wrist instead and voila!I love it and I know Allie will too. The ribbon wraps around the wrist three times and secures with a button in the back. I used this sweet dragonfly for the button closure to mimic the bow.

Plus, there is something about this salmon color that you just want to dive in to. This is another simple and quick diy – definitely less than 30 minutes!

Cut your 3/8" ribbon to desired length. I wanted it to wrap around a few times. Measure desired length by placing the middle of the ribbon on top of her wrist and wrapping the ends around her wrist once each to join at the bottom of the wrist (effectively three times around). Add 2 1/2 additional inches for the closure. My 6 year old daughter required 18" in length, including the 2 1/2" required to attach the button and make the closure loop. If you want the bracelet to be a surprise, measure with yarn or string to get to the appropriate length.

Tie the wired bow. These are step-by-step directions on how to make a good-looking bow.

Make two loops.

Now, here’s the trick, its time to flip the bow over. Hold the newly pushed through right loop of the bow in your right hand and let the rest of the bow rotate around it – the left hand tail will flip over the top and the left loop of the bow will also rotate or flip. In this way, the tails both go nicely out the bottom and the center front will be nice and square.

Tighten bow. Play with it, tightening and loosening, until you like how it looks.

For the closure, fold about 1/2 to one inch of one end of the ribbon over to sew on the button. This double thickness will add substance and some structure to the end of your bracelet.

Sew on button.

Now its time to sew the closure loop on the other end of the ribbon. If you can, try to fit the bracelet to your child at this point. You want the end of ribbon to fit snugly around button. If you can’t try it on, it is definitely best to have measured your child’s wrist with something, such as yarn or string. I used a twist tie and wrapped it around Allie’s wrist two times to get a general measurement of wrist width. She’s hasn’t seen this yet!

Sew loop in ribbon as follows, with extra tail to secure closure loop with triple thickness of ribbon. You can trim the tail if you’d like. I wanted to keep it to be able to increase the size of the bracelet in the future.

The closure loop should fit around the button snugly and look like this:

Adjust bow to your liking – finis!