Crunchy Baby Tag Toy

Back when I had Brooke, my DEAR, dear, dearest friend Pam sent a package of baby goodies and within her box of creations was a cute baby tag blanket. It's soft, chewy, and Brooke loves it! {love ya, Pamsies!}

Lately, Brooke is obsessed with the crunchy, plastic baby wipe packaging and I can't change her diaper without {carefully} hiding it from her. So I'm making her a *crunchy* tag blanket toy and now we'll have one of each! One for quiet times and one for her to be loud with! Perfect!

This little project was simple - no special measurements, just eyeballing. You can eyeball, right? So go grab some fabric scraps, some ribbon scraps, and join me!

***Note: you don't have to make yours 'quilt style' like I did. You can just use one big piece of fabric, but I happened to like the busy fabrics together like this to add interest.
Now cut six squares of random pieces - five rectangles cut in half. I believe mine were 4 x 7 and then I cut them in half.

I also played with various colors of

trim on the square pieces and loved it! You'll want to sew those onto the squares before you piece them together.

Sew the squares together with right sides facing; press open

Then sew the rows together, right sides facing; press open.

Now I'm not a quilter, I don't have the nerves for it...and you can see why. Even though I measured everything, cut all of my squares perfectly square, they still didn't line up whilst sewing them together. WHY??? I don't know. But who cares, right?! It's still darn cute. (plus, babies don't care.)

Then you square up your lines with your rotary cutter & ruler after your pieces are all stitched together.

Now pin on your ribbons. Get creative, colorful, and have fun! Velvet textures are great, too, but I couldn't find any.

Now on to the crunchy part. This is a piece of the baby wipes packaging I cut up - I probably could have done a better job at getting a larger piece, but it isn't going to matter. The thing will crunch! But because it's smaller than my top and bottom piece, I'm going to sew it onto the wrong side of my fabric before I do anything else so it will stay put.

There! Now it's secure and not going to go anywhere. If you don't want this big of a piece, do strips, circles, or random patches on this bottom piece. That way you'll still get crunch without it being SO crunchy!

Next, you should baste your ribbons all the way around before you stitch the thing shut like I did, that way you can remove your pins. You don't want to turn this right-side-out with pins in it. {durh...wish I would have thought of that sooner...}

Then put right sides together, sew around leaving about 6 -8 inches opening in the side. Clip your corners and trim up the trimmin's - you know the drill.

Turn your fabric right-side-out; press flat.

Now you can put that last little ribbon in place while tucking the hole back into place.

Sew close to the edge all the way around, securing the opening and finishing the piece.

And that's it! Now go grab yourself a cute little baby and let 'em barf all over your hard work!

Brooke LOVES this, by the way!!! I even think it exceeded her low expectations. haha.

More Ribbons

For all of you bow-makers out there, you HAVE to check out this site, "Ribbons and Bows Oh My!" They have all kinds of ribbons, clips, padded headbands, stretchy headbands, etc. I was quite impressed with their pricing, too. Due to the holiday season, they were out of some of the ribbon I wanted (1/4" grossgrain) but there's still so much to choose from. Check it out!

My Halloween Clips!

These clips are just samples because I had some leftover ribbon from all of my ribbon tying today.

We already covered the Korker bow and the bow on top is just the Figure 8 bow with a little Korker spiral in the middle.

I only had one little Korker spiral left over from my other clips only to show you that you can add little bells & whistles before you put the top knot on the bow. If I had more black spirals, I probably would have used them. But you get the idea, right?!

So here's the general idea and you can get as creative as you want.

You make 2 figure 8 loops and wire your spirals in the middle all together.

I wired the bow onto my clip because hot glue tends to come off pretty easily.

The wire should be flat so it doesn't bother your little one's head.

Here is my model again. Like I said before - it's just not the same on him as it would be on a cute little girl - but I wanted to give you a general idea of how CUTE this little bow is!

Simple Figure 8 Bow

Isn't he a great model?! I guess this bow doesn't have the same "look" on him as it would some cute little girl. But you get the general idea, right?!

This one is pretty basic and looks harder than it really is.

First of all, you don't have to cut your ribbon from the spool until you get the bow tied how you want it. You could save a lot of ribbon that way.

So start the bow by making a loop like this - kind of like an Awareness Ribbon. I don't have a better word to describe it! Leave a long enough tail at the bottom so your bow has tails.

Then cross over and make the same kind of loop on the other side, making a Figure 8 shape. Do the same thing two more times, making a total of 4 loops.

This is what it should (sort of) look like. I need to adjust my bow here, but you get the general idea.

Using a piece of wire bent into a "U" shape and some needle-nose pliers, secure the wire around the bow nice and tight.

Like this.

For the center knot, cut yourself a medium length piece of ribbon - maybe 5 inches or so - and fold it over again in that same loop.

Draw one of the tails through the loop to get a knot in the middle.

Hot glue (if you want) the knot to the center of the bow and tie a knot in the back of the bow like you see here. Now you should have two sets of tails.

Adjust your bow how you want it, trim the tails the way you want, and glue it to your clip or baby elastic.

Hair Bows

My little one is sporting the "Super Simple" Hair bow featured earlier. She saw all of my ribbons out and wanted to know if I could make one for her to wear with her dress.

Anyway - I've dedicated a section on this site just to hair bows because I have this irritation in the depths of my soul regarding hair bow instructions. You can look all over the internet for HOURS and not find any free instructions! What's the big deal?!

So this is for all of you out there who, like me, just want some basic instructions and don't want to infringe on the hair bow making business!

Girly Things is a webside strictly dedicated to hair bow instructions - go check it out! And if you're interested in some fancy bows and are willing to purchase instructions, then this site is for you.

If you would rather buy your bows than make them, my good friend, Chantel, has an adorable website called Kidcessories Boutique and her prices and styles are the best, in my opinion!

While you're checking out cute hair bows, don't forget to look at the cute Turkey Clippy since Turkey Day is coming!

Korker Bow

This is one of my FAVORITE hair bows of all time!

I would suggest that you use 2 or 3 different colors, but for the sake of time today I just did the one color.

THINK FESTIVE!

The smaller the dowel, the tighter the curl. I cut a goove in my dowel on either end so I could wrap the ribbon through it and keep it secure.

FIRST, Preheat your oven to 275 degrees and line a baking sheet with foil. (We're cookin', sister)

Wrap your ribbon all the way down the dowel and secure at the ends. If you don't have slits in your dowel, use wooden clothes pins. (Obviously, plastic will melt.)

This dowel will only do one bow, so if you want to do two bows or multi-colored bows, you're going to need to wrap more dowels.

Bake at 275 for about 15-20 minutes. When you gently slide the ribbon off of the dowel, determine if the curls are tight enough. If they're loose, put them back in the oven for another few minutes.

I like to mist a little water on the ribbon so it comes out a little crunchier.

When your curls are as tight as you want them, cut them about 3 to 4 inches long.

DON'T FORGET THE FRAY BLOCKER! You can purchase bottled Fray Check liquid, or use clear nail polish.

Then you'll need to bend a medium size piece of wire like this.

Lay your curls on top of the wire and secure tightly.

Twist the wire, clip it, and bend it over like this.

And that's it! It's ready to be glued on to your headbands or clips.

Loopy Bow

FIRST of all, I am SO sorry for the horrible pictures! It is so dark and cloudy outside and since I'm still waiting patiently for my dream studio(hehe), I have to suffer with limited lighting today.

So let's make some more bows then, shall we?!

My only complaint with my finished product here is that I wish I would have done one more loop with the skinny ribbon. But oh well - here's how you do this bow:



(HORRIBLY blurry...) Start with 5 or 6 strips of ribbon like this. It doesn't matter exactly how long they are - but measure if you feel like it.


Then glue each strip together like this.

Next, you're going to wire each set of looops together like this. It can be an incredibly frustating thing to keep the ribbons from overlapping each other, but try....without saying any swear words...

Here's what it should look like all wired together.

Do this exact same thing on your 2nd set of loops and leave yourself plenty of wire so you can wrap this set around the first set.

So attatch the 2nd set of loops to the first set of loops, wire them tight together, and trim the wire in the back and fold over so the rough edges aren't sticking up.

Then with your final loop(s), take a long piece of wire, and secure that loop on top of the other two sets like this picture.

Be sure to hold everything really tight and wrap the wire tightly without breaking it.

Here's what it should look like in the back with your wire all twisted, clipped, and folded down nicely.

Now we're ready for the topper.


Fold a piece of ribbon like this - shaped like an Awareness Ribbon. Then bring one of your tails into the loop and tie a knot.

Glue the knot on the center of the bow and wrap the tails around to the back of the bow. Trim them and wrap them tight - glue in place.

And you're done! You can glue this onto a clip or a baby elastic.

Don't forget to make a matching Ribbon T-Shirt or Onesie!