Weekend Craftivity: Paper Bows

I've been on a crafting kick lately, can you tell? I think my brain is saturated with ideas thanks to Pinterest, Etsy and all the bloggers who've hosted craft link-up parties recently, and it makes me just want to do something already. Not just ooo and ahh (although that's nice in and of itself), but do. Create.

So that's what I did. I made something. And that something would be paper bows. I used And Here We Are's tutorial I posted on in the Creative Bits series from a week-ish ago. I pretty much followed the tutorial's steps exactly, but I did make some minor adjustments that made making the bows a little easier for me. If you make it to the end of this post, you'll find them there :).

Pssst...If you'd like to make your own bows, I would suggest reading And Here We Are's tutorial first so that everything I refer to makes sense.

The materials I used were:

• 12"x12" scrapbook paper (I had this Martha Stewart variety pack on hand from years ago. I used several patterns in the same color. Yes, I admit, I'm a self-proclaimed crafting materials hoarder.)
• Paper cutter
• Stapler
• Glue dots (They come in a roll from craft stores like Michael's.)

I started out making a single bow for a gift box. In case it was an utter failure or wasn't as easy as it looked, I only cut up enough materials for the one bow. I used six long strips of the scrapbook paper and one short strip. Each strip was 1" wide. I formed loops and stacked them on top of each other by placing the center of one loop on top of another in a circular pattern. After stapling the six long loops together in the middle, and gluing the short loop on top, I ended up with this:

I love how it turned out! It was so easy that I decided heck, why not make six more and stick 'em on a wreath for the door? I already had this fall wreath on the door...

...So it was obviously time to change it up for the new season being that it's December and all :). I removed the ribbon rosettes so that I had a blank, burlap-wrapped wreath to work with. Then I just placed the six paper bows evenly around the wreath form and pinned them on from the undersides of the bows to form this:

It almost looks like snowflakes. Winter-esque without being too Christmas-y - at least to me. This way, I can leave it up long after December until it starts warming up again (then I'll have to make something new!) It looked so pretty hanging off the rocking chair against the Christmas tree, I almost didn't want to move it; but that wouldn't have worked too well considering it was completely blocking the hall, ha. Here it is from another angle and a little closer just for good measure:

After the wreath had its photo shoot, it went up on our door:

Yay!

And here are my pointers to add to the tutorial for making these if you decide to take on this little project yourself:

Did you take on any winter crafts this weekend? Decorate for Christmas? Spend hours detangling Christmas lights? Leave me a comment below!