Monthly Craft Challenge: Featuring Ribbon

I like to do a lot of things with ribbon, I use it a lot of my scrapbook pages; it's probably on 3 out of 5 pages. I use it on tags, as a decorative border, to hang embelishments off of, and to make flowers or leaves. A lot of projects looks much cuter with a little ribbon tied on☺

My plan was to have a fun ribbon pillow made for the craft challenge but I've been too preoccupied with planning the Mother's Day Tea Party we had yesterday. For those of you still waiting for my paper bag tutorial, thanks for your patience. I'm planning on working on that this Saturday and hope to have it ready for next week.

Okay back to this craft challenge! Now that I'm a mommy of a little girl, and a little fashionista at that, I've noticed that I use it an awful lot to make coordinating hair clippies. I've suffered a few hot glue burns, but they are so worth it. I love it when someone asks me where I got her hair accessories from and I'm able to say, "I made it!"

I find myself holding up ribbon at the craft store thinking, hmm...would this make a cute clippie? I also love shopping for fun embellishments for them, and have found shaped buttons work really well because if your child wears her clippies through, oh say the sprinkler, they'll dry off and be fine. They have them for all sorts of holidays, you might have to cut the shank off the back first, but it's inexpensive to get a whole package of themed buttons. Then you make a bunch for gifts too! Rhinestones and felt shapes and flowers also work really well. Check out the dollar section of Target, they often have scrapbook embellishments that work really well.

I've put together a bunch of my favorites for Heidi's Monthly Craft Challenge. Check out her blog, Blue Eyed Blessings for more ideas on how to get crafty with ribbon. She gives us a new crafting material to work with each month, and we'd love for you to join in too!I mainly use alligator clips to make mine, but sometimes I use snap barrettes, like the pair I made above. The sky blue matches so many of her outfits, especially the strawberry line she wore all last summer.
These were also worn a lot last summer, and I love the bright colors! The flowers on the top one and the pink one on the bottom are all from a package I found in Target's dollar section. Those are rhinestone brads in the center of each flower.

This one uses a button from a package all themed in red, white, and blue. She wore it on Memorial Day at our town's parade.

I used scrapbook embellishments I bought years ago and had sitting in my stash on these. I made three sets and gave them to my friend's two daughters when they came over our house on the Fourth of July. The Halloween clippies on the left matched her fall outfits and the ribbon came in a set with four ribbons all for a dollar from Target. Each spool had just enough to make one set and now my daughter has clippies for fall, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. The spider clippies, I made two sets of and were gifts. The pumpkins, spiders, and webs all came in the same Halloween themed button pack.

This is another Halloween clippie I made her to match her brighter Halloween outfits. The ghost is a button hot glued on.

This is one of my fancier clippies, that looks like a little evergreen tree. I just love it, and I found the directions online for free! There is so much great information out there! You can see my post with the sources for the tree clippie and the box template used for the ones below here.

It also has links to my favorite online resources and clippie making tutorials, so check it out if you'd like to start making your own too! It's really fun and there are a lot of different more advanced techniques shown on those websites too!

These are little sets I made for my friend's daughters, we gave them as part of their gifts. Each girl got a set with the holly berries and a second set. I also made the mini Chinese take out style containers.

I didn't make this clippie holder, I bought it at a craft fair before I got all into making things on my own but it would be very easy to make. It's just a wooden hanger with the long ribbons hot glued to the other side. She's got fabric flowers hot glued on the front. The ribbon around the metal handle is actually another ribbon clippie. I am just now running out of space and plan on making my own very soon. I think decoupaging on some pretty scrapbook paper on the front would make it even cuter!

I hope you liked my examples of how I've been using ribbon lately! Don't forget to check out the rest of this month's craft challenge participants!