Butterfly Hair Clips tutorial

Well, this is my first tutorial, and I'm going to be upfront here... I did it in a hurry and the photos are not great, but hopefully you'll get the general idea!! :) You can see my original butterfly hair clip post HERE. Feel free to let me know if any parts of this are not clear.

First, preheat your oven to 250 degrees F (125 degrees C).

Gather your supplies:

Grosgrain ribbon in coordinating colors

hot glue gun/glue

alligator hair clip

thin wooden dowel

lighter

pencil

Step 1: Wrap the ribbon that you intend to use for the butterfly's body around the wooden dowel, secure the ends with either wooden clothes pins, or your metal hair clips. (This dowel was too big, but it was the only one I had.)

Step 2: Put your ribboned dowel on a cookie sheet and place in the oven for 25 minutes.

Step 3: Choose your ribbon for the butterfly wings. You need two coordinating colors. The outer color needs to be 2 inches longer than the inside. For this butterfly, I did 8 inches in the dark pink, and 6 inches in the white. (It also works well in a 10/8 measurements, but if you go bigger than that, you might need to play around with thicker ribbon to see how it looks.

Step 4: Fold your ribbon in half, and mark the center with a pencil.



Step 5: Fold the end of your ribbon to meet the center, and crease it, then mark the crease with a pencil.

You should now have marks on the 1/4 and 1/2 points of your ribbon.

Step 6: Using a lighter, (I used a candle since I needed to take a pic at the same time... and please excuse my messy desk, haha), lightly singe the ends of your ribbon so that they won't come unraveled.



Step 7: Put a dot of hot glue just to the right side of your 1/2 mark, then fold your ribbon over this way and secure it down. The 1/4 mark should be on the bottom edge of the horizontal piece of ribbon.

Step 8: Do the same with the other side of ribbon.


Step 9: Fold over the bottom parts of ribbon like this, making sure not to twist the ribbon backwards. The loop should be on the front, with the end gluing to the back.

Step 10: Do the same with your other ribbon.

Step 11: Put a dab of hot glue in the center of your bigger ribbon, and stick the smaller ribbon inside.

Step 12: Your dowel ribbon should be done in the oven by now and cooled down a bit. Remove the ribbon from the dowel, and it should be curled like this. Snip off an inch or so, (whatever is suitable for the size of your butterfly), and hot glue it to the middle of your butterfly.

Step 13: Cut two 1/2 inch pieces of really thin ribbon for the antennae. Put a dab of glue on the back of your butterfly and put the two antennae in place.

It should look something similar to this now:

Step 14: Next, take your alligator clip, and cut 4.5 inches of coordinating ribbon, and melt the edges. Starting underneath the top part of the clip, hot glue the ribbon on. Wrap around the top and into the hinge area, and halfway across the bottom.



Step 15: Put a dab of hot glue on the top of the clip, and attach your butterfly.

Enjoy!


Thanks for reading!