Learn how to make multi-loop bows with Emily Keaton! :)

My guest today is the fabulous Emily Keaton of My Litte Slice of Bliss. I "met" her when she participated in one of my guest blogger challenges. Emily's style is a mix of classy & elegant and simple & sweet. I love how she mixes and matches different textures and creates interest on her cards without bulk for easy mailing. Her stamping skills are impeccable and I love visiting her blog to look at wonderful creations. Today she shares her secret for making multi-loop bows and is hosting a challenge with a cool prize for a random participant. :)

But let's have a look at her gallery featuring those multi-loop bows...

Hi! I’m Emily, and I live north of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, with my husband and our 13 year-old daughter and 9 year-old son. I’m a freelance writer and editor for math textbooks, which is great for our family because it means I can work from home and always be there when my family is. It also gives me the flexibility (like when everyone else is commuting or when I’m between long-term freelance projects) to indulge in some of the things that make me happy, chief among them being playing with paper. I just love—and need—to create! I share my latest creations and tips on my blog, My Little Slice of Bliss, and I’m currently designing for DeNami Design Rubber Stamps. I’m so excited to be a guest blogger here on Do More With Less—thank you so much for inviting me, Yvonne!

TUTORIAL:

I love to mail the cards that I make to family and friends, so it’s important to me to always have a selection of mail-able (read: “flat!”) cards in my stash! That’s why I keep hemp twine, baker’s twine, string, embroidery floss, and crochet thread nearby when I create so I can add fiber accents that are relatively flat and friendly for mailing. A few months ago I started making multi-loop bows from twine to accent my cards, and visitors to my blog asked how I did it. It’s really pretty simple, so I thought that today I’d show you how to do it, too.

I make my multi-loop bows with my Bow Easy. Don’t have a Bow Easy? Then you can easily make a stand-in rig from chipboard using these measurements. (Just know that your finished bow won’t slide off the rig as smoothly as the real thing, so be prepared and don’t tighten your bow too tightly while it’s on the rig.)

Ready? Let’s get started.

1.  Begin by laying the twine across the top of the rig and holding it down on the left with your thumb.

2.  Now wrap the free end of the twine around the fingers of the Bow Easy a total of three times.

(For a pouffier, loopier bow, wrap the twine around the fingers additional times.)

3.  Next, lay the twine over top of all three wraps and thread the end down through the space between the fingers, forming a loose loop on top. Don’t pull tight.

4.  Now bring the end of the twine around to the front and up between the fingers.

   

5.  Pass the end of the twine through the loop you just created, and pull the end gently to shrink the loop slightly.

   

6.  Eventually this loop will be pulled tight, but at this point you can add a length of twine for tying the bow around your card. (For the sake of visibility, I’m showing the length of twine as solid black in this step. Just slip it through the untightened loop.)

      

7.  Now you are ready to tighten the loop (notice that I’ve now replaced the black twine with twine that matches my project).

    

8.  Slip the bow off the Bow Easy.

      

9.  Currently, the bow is face down. Turn the bow around to face up and fluff the loops. Attach to a project as desired.

      

CHALLENGE:

I hope that you’ll try making your own multi-loop bows from twine, string, or embroidery floss! I’m offering this collection of six clear stamp sets (2.5” x 2.5” each) from We R Memory Keepers and a baker’s twine sampler from DeNami Design to one randomly drawn participant!

Ready to play along? Please post a direct link to your newly created project featuring the multi-loop bow via Inlinkz [located at the end of the post] by Friday 23 March, 11.59pm (GMT+8).

As always, please leave a little love for my guest Emily.