Hair Bow Organizer

A friend of mine saw this idea and asked me to make one for her niece, who turned 3 last weekend.  Here is the original post from The Idea Room.

So we set off to the craft store to get what we needed.  A picture frame, foam core, batting, fabric & ribbon.  Pretty simple.  (Actually, it wasn't because we went to Michael's, where they don't sell fabric or batting...I had to make a second trip to Hobby Lobby and ended up buying a second frame and she returned the first one...today's lesson?  go to Hobby Lobby first and save yourself time :)

First, cut the foam core to the size of the opening, or ever so slightly smaller (batting is coming and its rather thick!).

Cut a layer or two of batting, a little bigger than the foam core. (I used two layers of the high loft batting - very fluffy!)

Next, cut the fabric to about the same size as the batting.

Begin by stapling one edge of the batting & fabric in place.  This gets tricky with foam core because it doesn't hold staples super firmly, but this is a light duty sort of piece, so just push them into place if necessary and you should be fine.

Next, staple the other side.  There is sort of an art to making this look good.  Too loose, and the fabric will look wrinkly - too tight and the fabric will pull.  Take your time and play with it a little.  As mentioned, the staples are easy to remove, so if you don't get it right the first time, just try again.

Do yourself a favor and clip the corners of the fabric and batting so that there is less bulk to staple through.  I started in the middle of the board and did the corners last.  After everything was tacked in place and looked good, I went back and added a few more staples to make sure everything was secure.

It should look something like this.  Smooth, no wrinkles, no areas pulled too tightly or stretched.  (Although, if its not perfect, don't sweat it.  You're going to add ribbon, frame and bows.  It will hide a lot of your mistakes.

Staple ribbon vertically across the board.  You OCD perfectionists should measure (like I did), otherwise just eyeball it until it looks good.

Place it in the frame and staple it in place.  Be careful and staple at sort of an angle so the staples go into the frame, and not through the front.

Because this was a gift, I wanted to cover up all the messiness.  Had I realized that I wanted to do this when I was buying supplies, I would have bought some felt the size of the whole frame.  It was a last minute decision, so I used poster board.  And because the picture frame had pre-attached hangers, I just put it on the inside part, leaving those exposed.  (It would look better to take the felt to the edges of the frame, glue instead of staple and put the hangers over the felt...oh well, yours will look better than mine on the back...where no one sees it.)

Tada!  The finished product...Soooo cute!  Complete with her two hair bows :).  (She only recently got to the point where she had enough hair to use bows...so her collection is small...I'm sure it will grow now that she has so much space to store them!)

A little dark, but here is Princess Madeline and her new bow organizer!

Comment below to let me know what you think and/or if you try this for yourself!  And don't forget to "follow" us on blogger on the right side of the page.

Grace and love,

Jenn