Secrets to Bow Making Success: Review and Giveaway

I have been really excited about bringing this product to my readers attention. Secrets to Bow Making Success is just one of several instructional DVDs brought you by Next Chapter Learning and Jenn Spencer. Many of you are young moms or grandmas with little girls in your life. If you have a crafty side and an hour or two to spare you can use this instructional DVD and manual to learn how to make bows that would make great accessories for the young ladies in your life. This course will teach you all the basics to making bows.

This instructional DVD has more than just hair bows. Right now, we just have little Logan, and while he hopes for a sister one day, needless to say he doesn't wear hair bows. However, the bonus section in this course does show how to make a great pacifier clip for him. There is also a big section on how to make gift bows for presents and more. I have always wanted to have more beautifully wrapped presents under the tree but buying those big poofy bows is out of the question. Some of those bows can be ten dollars or more. Ribbon however can be very inexpensive, even wire ribbon if you shop bargain bins and buy in the off season (i.e. not major holidays). I usually make it a practice to buy new decorations post holidays anyway, you save so much money that way!

I was excited about the possibility of adding bows to my Etsy shop, Two Little Sea Stars, a baby boutique and more. I am a complete novice at bowmaking and I was hoping this video would make it super easy to turn me into an expert on bow making overnight. Not quite. The video is great, but I still have a lot to learn. You can tell the instructor, Emily, is not a beginner so I'm glad to be learning from someone who is great at making bows. I probably watched each section ten times as I made my bows to pick up on all the great tips and tricks to make my loops even, my ribbons straight, etc. When I couldn't quite tell what the instructor was doing on the video I turned to my manual which is 106 pages of color pictures and step by step instructions.

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Here is what I made:

A corker bow: This was a lot of fun; who knew you could use your oven to make hair bows? These bows are really cute and look like little pom-poms. I learned how to line a french barrette with ribbon and how to create corked ribbon and bring it all together. You can actually leave it looking like a pom-pom but since I didn't buy quite enough ribbon I used an extra piece to make mine look like a bow tie to cover up the area where I tied my poms. You probably wouldn't have even noticed but I thought this was a fun variation and it shows that with a little imagination you can do way more than just the base bow design.

Alligator clips with flowers:  Learning how to line the clip was super easy but I can see how if I had attempted to do this myself with no instruction I probably would have done too much covering of the clip. There is actually a secret to getting these lined but still making them able to grip hair. I won't give that one away, you'll have to watch the video. There is also a great bonus section on adding all sorts of embellishments which gave me the idea to add these flowers. All the material for these clips I just pulled from my scrapbooking supplies.

Loopy layered bow:  This one was my favorite. I wanted to see what I could do with materials other than ribbon. I lined a french barrette and then layered felt, organza, and a button over a thin loopy bow. The loopy bow took a lot of practice and this is where I was glad I had my manual to look at detailed pictures. It looked so simple when the instructor made it, but even going slow I still didn't quite get my loops even, so I'll have to keep practicing. In my opinion, this bow still looks awesome though!

Win It! LearnHowToMakeBows.com  and Next Chapter Learning are giving away Secrets to Bow Making Success to one of my readers, a $27 value! Enter using the Rafflecopter form below. Also be sure to check out these other great courses offered by Next Chapter Learning:

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