It's always a good feeling when you discover making something isn't as hard as you'd originally thought. For instance, bows. Yes, like birthday and Christmas present bows and sure you can go buy a bag off the shelf and stuff it in your closet to be forgotten about, but why bother when you can just make them as you need them...
Jessica Jones over at How About Orange... posted up these easy diy bow instructions that utilize old magazine pages. We'd seen them floating around the internet before, but they'd never seemed quite so easy and do-able before!
This is a great way to use up scrap pieces of paper from around the house, magazines that are headed for the trash, old wrapping paper and even junk mail!
Her pictures will make you want to make one today... or if you're us, make 30 today! You just never know when you'll need a fabulous bow!
Check out the full tutorial over at How About Orange!
(Images: Jessica Jones for How About Orange)
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
I heart this idea!!! As the girlfriend of a man who never throws away his newspapers, this is a great repurposing idea for the colorful comics section!
view Kpaige13's profile
GENIUS!! Love it , love it, love it!!
view tasharoe's profile
Wow - How cool is that?
view bepsf's profile
Wow, awesome! Love this.
view Meeg's profile
The fun of this is that you'd be able to scale this up to make a larger bow -- if you kept the ratios the same, you could make a bow a foot across, or larger.
view jrochest's profile
this is amazing, because my friend has inspired me to wrap gifts in all sorts of creative ways, eg. used bingo sheets and wool!
view hla21's profile
Brilliant!
view unabridged's profile
Whoa! Careful with the old maps. Historians need those. Even seemingly common maps of today may fill in some knowledge gaps in the future. Please don't go overboard shredding them into ribbon.
view aj's profile
aj: With the internet I can't imagine the need for paper maps will be as great as you think. EVERYTHING is on the computer now, it seems...
view tylr61's profile
Lots of fun... :)
view aria2000's profile
Instead of using staples for each loop I use a metal brad and slide the loops all onto the brad with the prongs facing downwards. Then just spread the prongs on the bottom of the bow and it's good to go! You can sometimes see the brad inside the bow, but it lets people know it's home made :) I always appreciate that.
view GreenEggsnTofu's profile