How to Make a Paper Bow

Thursday is a holiday for the locals.  It's International Women's Day.  I think it might be as international as Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus!  At any rate, there are some lovely women here to whom we are very intentional about showing kindness and encouraging, so this holiday is a great opportunity to do just that. 

I don't know exactly when we'll see each of them, so I bought some chocolate bars and wrapped them up in some pretty paper.  I could have added some ribbon had I had any on hand...

but I didn't, so I opted to use a little trick my mom taught me years ago,

and I made a matching bow from the paper to dress the package up a little.

Here's how I did it:

You'll need scissors, tape, a stapler

{actually, in a pinch, you could do without the stapler}

and some scraps of the wrapping paper you're using.

Trim the paper to the width and length you'd like.

This will depend on how big and how full you'd like your bow to be,

so I have no dimensions for you- it's arbitrary.

The entire length of your strip will be folded in half.

Cut strips toward the fold, but stop cutting about 1/2" from the fold.

This is what a section looks like after it's

been cut and opened up.

Holding the middle section

{I'm not doing that below because I was taking the picture!},

gently curl the paper with your scissors.

Occasionally, a strip will rip off.

Don't worry about that because the finished bow

will hide it in the end.

Repeat with the remaining section(s).

Gently fold/gather/pinch each section together in the middle.

Layer the gathered sections on top of one another.

Staple the layers together.

If you're in a fix, you can skip this step, but

in general, the staple will make it all neat and tidy.

Tape the bow onto the package.

Gently fold/push the curled sections toward the middle and fluff...

until you get the bow looking like you want.

You can use this with almost any kind of paper and I venture a guess that people will think you're a genius! At least, my status was highly elevated in the teacher workroom when I helped another teacher wrap a gift in bulletin board paper and make a matching bow!

I'm linking this up with Sara at Thrifty Decor Chick and Beth from Home Stories A2Z.