How To: Woven Heart Hair Clip

Long time, no see! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, now on with Valentine's Day!!

Here is a simple guide to making woven heart hair clippies for your little darling.

You'll Need:

3/8th's width ribbon- any color, or style you want, though Grosgrain works best.
1 alligator clip, snap clip, barrette, or headband
Scissors
Hot Glue

1. Cut your ribbon to the length you want- I just kind of wing it, but it usually comes out around 4" in length.
2. Cut this ribbon in half, leaving two equal lengths.
3. Seal the ends with your desired method. I use a lighter to melt my ribbon ends, but fray check will work as well.
4. Glue the two pieces of ribbon together by the ends, so they form an L shape.
5. From here, lay the ribbon down, and take the piece that is glued to the back, and fold it so the end is laying on the front side of the ribbon, but right next to where the ribbon is glued on the backside. Glue it down.
6. This should give you a sort of a lower case b shape. Take the other ribbon end, which should be the only un-glued end at this point, and fold it backwards. You'll need to weave it through the ribbon, so that the end is against the back side of the ribbon. The weaves should be woven opposite of what is there. Glue the end to the backside. You should have a heart now with a woven center.
7. Add glue to the top of your pre-lined alligator clip, and attach it it. You can add gemstones, sequins, or even glitter glue to make it sparkle. 

You can use a single color, or two colors of ribbon. Patterns are all right, but it should be two sided, as the single side ribbon will be flipped to show the unprinted side as well.

Below are photos step by step, including showing you how to line an alligator clip, and how to use crafting foam to make a No-Slip-Grip for your hair clip. 

Clippie Keeper Cup

Today, I drove into Lansing so I could get a few things. Namely, I had gone through almost all of my 100 alligator clips I had picked up just last week. I have a problem- the first step is admitting it. When I think about it, though, it is pretty easy to go through them. When I make clippies, I almost always do 4 pairs that are in similar colors or styles, so they 'match', and I'm doing between 2 & 4 sets of 4 pairs each day, so... you do the math.

I wanted to buy more ribbon today. However, the ribbon was not on sale at Jo-Ann's, Hobby Lobby, or Michaels. Disappointing! I did grab a few of the $1 spools at Michaels, and found 6 or 7 spools on clearance for $.50 each at JoAnn's.

While I was at Michaels, I found little round, tall containers with lids- my first thought was a Clippie container! I picked up just 2 to start, but LOVE what I came up with.

Lately, my hair stuff has ranged towards just small clippies- fully lined alligator clips with minimal, and small decorations on them, or plain if the ribbon was already decorated. Something more for every day use than big old bows and what not.

My initial thought for the cup was that it would store a ton of clippies (and it does- I was able to store 50 individual small clippies in 1 cup, each decorated). My next thought was adding decoration to it, and making it look like a ribbon wrapped present. That, of course, led me to thinking- the ribbon can be used as storage, the same as a bow hanger!

So, that's what I did tonight. I took 2 lengths of ribbon, glued & folded the ends over to make a nice clean edge, then glued them to the cup- first along the bottom of the cup, then to the inside, so that the ribbon running up the side is not glued to the cup- clippies can be clipped onto them.

Totals for this project-

Cup- $1
Ribbon- $.25 (give or take)
Glue- Like what, $.10?

All in all, it was cheap to make. I have my first one up for sale in my Etsy shop, along with some of my clips.

Hair Clips & A Giveaway

As many of you know, I'm a frugal crafter. If I can buy it on sale, discount, or with a coupon, I love it. If it's free, I love it even more. So, what better way to feed my craft bug than with a FREE giveaway on the original Frugal blogger's website- Dollar Store Crafts?

Heather (great name!) over at DSC is giving away an X-Acto Silhouette Machine! Head on over to her site to sign up to win a $300 prize pack!

Next up- more hair clips. I kind of wish my girls were young enough for these, but my almost 9 year old assures me that wearing hair clips, bows, and flowers to school is SO EMBARRASSING, MOM! -sigh- In the mean time, I continue to make them.

Why? Well, first and foremost, they're quick, easy, fun craft projects I can do in 20 minutes without having to plan out a project, and right now, my time is sparse with photo editing, photo taking, and summer. Next up, they can be toted along to photo shoots and used if the client wants to use them. Third, I have nieces who are still young enough to love them, so anything that I don't sell, I give away.

Of course, to feed the addiction of making them, I do hope to sell some along the way. Anyway, lately I've been making the little ribbon lined clippies- great for every day use, and no where near as large & extravagant looking as huge bows and flowers. They're also great for younger kids who don't have much hair.

I've been listing my clippies at $2 for a matching pair, $1.50 for individual ones, and 3 pairs for $5. Below are some of my more recent ones. They are listed for sale on my Facebook page for My Frugal Family!

Korker Bows- A How To Tutorial

Well, between it being summer, and starting a photography business, I have very little time on my hands. One of the things I've been doing, though, is making bows. I tote them alone with me to photo shoots, so that they can be used in the shoots, and in some instances, sold.

I've known HOW to make Korker bows for a while, however, it's only been recently that I took the time to actually put the theory to test. While I'm sure most people who play around with bows know how to do these, I figured I would show the rest of the crew how to make them.

What You'll Need:

• 12-16" Dowels, roughly the diameter of a Pencil, give or take a bit. You can use extremely narrow dowels for thin ribbon- these make for cute, TINY little korkers. I've use thick and thin dowels, but pencil width makes the nicest korker size for 3/8" ribbon, IMHO.
• 3/8" ribbon. Anywhere from 1-4 different ribbons look best. When using patterned ribbon, I would recommend using no more than 2 patterns, and adding in at least 1, if not 2-3 solid coordinating ribbons.
• An oven
• Clothing pins
• Elastic Thread
• Alligator Clip, Hair Band tie, or Headband- your choice!
• Felt- This isn't required, but I prefer using it.

All right, so... here's the really "hard" instructions. This first part is just the instructions on how to turn plain ribbon into Korker ribbon.

1. Preheat your oven to 275 Degrees F. 
2. Take a dowel, and your first ribbon. You are going to wind it in a spiral around the dowel. Once you have it started, use a clothing pin to "pin" the ribbon in place. Once you have it started, it's super easy & fast to wind down the dowel. 
3. When the ribbon reaches the end, wind it around, cut it, then pin it in place using the clothing pin again. 
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 to fill as many dowels as you have. To put it into perspective, each full Korker bow is going to use between 4-8 dowels worth of ribbon. The more full you want it, obviously, the more ribbon you'll want to use.
5. Once you have all the dowels you want, place them either on a cookie sheet, or in a casserole dish or cake pan, and stuff them into the oven. Bake them for 25 minutes. You can leave them in longer, if you'd like, but 25 minutes will work good.
6. Remove them from the oven, and let the rods cool for 10 minutes or so, since the wood does get very hot to handle.
7. Once they are cool, you can unspiral them from the dowels. If you twist the ribbon to loosen it, you can slide it right off the dowel, though it may snag on the wood from time to time.

 Part 2- How to turn Korker ribbon into Korker Hair Clips.

1. First up, you want to cut your ribbon into smaller, more managable sections. You can lay it out, measure it, and cut it, but I find that just holding the ends, and stretching the middle tight with my scissors, then cutting it in half works well. I repeat this with each of the two left over strands, so that I get 4 3" korkers out of each dowel's worth of ribbon. You can also cut them smaller, and create "layers" of longer & shorter length.
2. Once you have all your ribbons cut, lay them out flat on the table on top of elastic thread. Pull tight, and tie it. This can sometimes leave your korkers uneven, though. My other meathod is to layer them onto a straight pin, then tie it while it is still on the pin, before removing the pin. You'll find all sorts of meathods on the web, and will find what works bvest for you after a few tries.
3. Once it's tied together, fluff it, and decide what will be the "bottom" of the hair tie. From here, take the felt, and cut a small circle to glue to the bottom. This gives it more surface space to glue to the item you want it on.
4. Take the item you are attaching it to, and add glue to the felt, before attaching it to the item. For skinny, elastic headbands, I add a circle of felt to the bottom, to seal it on with more surface space. With alligator clips and hard plastic headbands, just add the glue in the strip where the item will be.

Ta Da!

Variations- try experimenting with different types of ribbon. I've used Satin & Grosgrain with great results. I also tried Rick Rack, and it left it with a tiny bit of curl, but not a korker effect. You can also try out different widths of ribbon. I used both 1/4" and 1/8" today, and LOVED the teeny tiny Korkers as an addition, though the 1/8" size on a TEENY TINY dowel was hard to secure in place with a clothing pin.