Lady Bug Hair Clippies

ER's 3rd birthday is this week and I've been busy putting together these lady bug hair clippies to put in her party favor bag this week. You may remember that on ER's party invitation is a lady bug so I thought these would tie in nicely with the the party theme. I've put together a quick tutorial on how to make them and shown how I packaged them up in envelopes and the favor bags at the end of this.

Materials:

• Prong hair clippies, sold in a package at hair supply stores or in the jewelry section of some craft stores, mine came from Hobby Lobby
• Ribbon
• Craft Foam
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Ladybug Sizzix die and die cutting machine, this die is no longer made

Begin by cutting lengths of ribbon to fit your clippies. I do a rough estimate by simply wrapping one in the method shown below, without gluing. Hold it place while wrapping and then note approximate length. Cut and check for fit again. Cut a second lengh of ribbon to same length. Try hot gluing first length on to a clippie in the order shown below. Make adjustments to lenth as needed and then adjust the second length you already cut reflect any changes. Use this length as your pattern to cut addition ribbon as needed. I made twenty clippies or ten sets of two clippies so I needed twenty lengths of ribbon. Note that the total lenth will be about 3.5 inches.

I start by placing a bit of hot glue on the ribbon and then opening the clippie as wide as possible. Slide the ribbon in between open clip prongs, the side with hot glue on it should be facing up. Close and ribbon will attach itself to bottom of top prong. Continue as shown. Some people find attaching the ribbon in the opposite order easier, do what's comfortable to you. While making my twenty clippies I messed up on three and had to recut four lengths of ribbon. So if you make a few goofs, know that I did too! I always have to have extra supplies on hand☺ Other tutorials for covering a clippie can be seen here and here.

Here are my twenty ribbon covered clippies; now it's time to make the ladybugs. I die cut mine out of craft foam. They make all kinds of really cute foam stickers and precut shapes that come in packages and are inexpensive at crafts stores. If you do not have a die cutting system capable of cutting through foam or felt I suggest you look into using those; it would be a big time saver too. Foam shapes are nice because they're waterproof and hold up to little hands handling them. You can also use small silk flowers, buttons - be sure to cut the shank off first, or bows to decorate your clippies.

After you've die cut your shapes, in this case lady bugs, assemble them if they are layered like mine. I did not use hot glue for this I used white clear drying Aleene's tacky glue that comes in a gold and white bottle. It's great stuff and works really well on craft foam. After the lady bugs dry, hot glue them onto the clippies.

In hindsight I wish I'd used a cute checked or polk dot ribbon, but when I was choosing the ribbon I thought any kind of pattern would look too busy. I think they're missing a little something, but I decided Miss Perfectionist would have to let it go☺ I really don't have time to remake twenty clippies but I am type A enough to have wanted too!

To package them up I put them in little coin envelopes that were part of giveaway I won from Cathe. I stamped a message and attached a sticker. Ideally, I'd have used a graphic from the digital kit I used to design the birthday invitation to make a sticker, but this was much quicker and easier.
I did however, make coordinating tags for the favor bags. I created a new document in Photoshop Elements, dropped my digital paper backgrounds in, and then added graphics from the kit on to the paper. Then printed them out and punched out the shapes. I think they came out really cute and I love how they tie in and coordinate with the party's theme and match the invitation. The rest of the favor bag was simple to put together. I put the clippies and some other goodies into a purple paper lunch bag and then closed it with some ribbon.