DSP Bows

Today I’m going to show you how I made the bows.

I’ll start with the flower bow on the Gumball Green bag. I first saw these on Cathy Parlitsis’ website here. She has a video tutorial showing you how to put the flowers together too so you can watch that if you’ve got a few minutes. I made mine using a slightly different technique, this is how I made my flower:

Here is the list of products that you will need to make this flower:

Blossom Punch (125603)
Bone Folder (102300)
Paper-Piercing Tool (126189)
Stampin’ Pierce Mat (126199)
Brad (I used the 1/8″ Mini Brads 122941)
Card Stock (I used Cherry Cobbler 119685)

To start, punch 4 Blossoms from your card stock. Then take your bone folder and curl the petals both directions until the card stock starts to come apart slightly on the edges.

Then carefully pull the card stock apart into two layers.

Continue to pull the card stock gently apart until you have two pieces.

Repeat this process with all 4 punches. Then lay the 8 punches in a stack, making sure that your layers don’t line up exactly. Then pierce the center of the stack with your Paper-Piercing Tool.

Place your brad through the pierced hole and open it in the back to hold the layers together.

Start pulling your layers toward the center sort-of crunching them together so that your flower will be full.

Finish fluffing the layers and add a glue dot to the bottom and adhered the flower to your bag. So easy and so much fun to make!

And Stampin’ Up! was nice enough to include instructions for making the large bow in my last order! Their instructions said to glue the strips of Designer Series Paper together, but liquid glue and I don’t get along very well…I usually end up with the papers stuck to my fingers and nothing stuck together where it should be, so I used a brad to hold the bow together and it worked great! My only suggestions would be to use a regular size brad, I used one of the Mini Brads and it was barely large enough to finish the bow.

Here is the list of products that you will need to make this bow:

Designer Series Paper (I used Cherry Cobbler paper from the Regals Designer Series Paper Stacks 117154)
Bone Folder (102300)
Paper-Piercing Tool (126189)
Stampin’ Pierce Mat (126199)
Brad (I used the 1/8″ Mini Brads 122941, but I’d suggest using a regular size brad)

Start by cutting eight 1″ x 5-1/2″ strips and five 1″ x 4-1/2″ strips of DSP.

Using your Paper-Piercing Tool, poke a hole about 1/4″ from each end of all of the DSP strips. I lined up the strips in stacks of 4 or 5 and pierced them in groups rather then individually.

Run your bone folder down each strip to slightly curl it.

Make a circle with one of the 4-1/2″ strips, line up the pierced holes and place the brad through the center so that the point of the brad is facing out of the circle.

Starting with the 4-1/2″ strips, make a teardrop shape with each strip. Line up the holes, then place each teardrop on the brad. Work around your starting loop in a circular pattern. Once you’ve used up your 4-1/2″ strips, then begin the same process of making teardrop shapes with your 5-1/2″ strips and continue to assemble the bow in a circular pattern. The most difficult part for me was realizing that what looks like the bottom of the teardrop is the pattern that will actually show the most on the bow.

Continue to layer the teardrops around in a circle until you’ve used up all of the 4-1/2″ and 5-1/2″ strips.

Once you’ve got all of your strips placed, open the brad on the bottom to hold the layers in place. Since I’d used a brad and not glue, I was able to move the parts of the bow around a bit to reshape it once I had finished layering.

Then place a few glue dots over the brad and center of the bow and adhere it to your gift bag. The bow was actually quick to put together. And it makes a fairly large bow, it measures about 4-1/2″ across.