Hi Everyone!  I’m so excited! Now, y’all know that I’ve been a crafter for pretty much my entire married life–35 years…whew, that is a long time. 😉  🙂  I have created many, many things in that time, but, my nemesis has *always* been craft bows.  A long, long time ago, I learned how to create a “tiered” bow, meaning that each row of loops in the bow were a little longer than the last…something like this, I made this bow for my Easter front door wreath:

Now, that is a perfectly gorgeous bow and trust me y’all, I have made many a project with that type of bow attached.  But, I wanted to learn how to do something a little different so that I could expand my repertoire.  So I went about searching around YouTube and I learned how to make a big bold “round” (for lack of a better way of describing it) bow.  This is the type of bow that I usually attach to the swag points of my pip berry garland that I have draping down our staircase.  Here is an example of that bow…which I absolutely adore!

I am always trying to push the walls of my little comfortable crafting box out and I love to try to create new and different things.  So that is where the new bow that I just learned how to make comes into play.  I found a lady on YouTube, her name is Julie and her channel is called “Southern Charm Wreaths” and she is where I learned how to do the spiffy bows that I’m fixin’ to show you–she dubs them “Funky Bows”!  I cannot tell you how absolutely thrilled I am with these very special bows and after learning the basic concept, I’m now putting my own spin on them! I will add my YouTube tutorial videos below each set of pictures–I’ve been busily about creating amped up lantern swags made with that sweet bow. 🙂

Here is an example of my very first lantern swag–I made this to go atop a beautiful red lantern that I found in my locally owned craft store here in my town.  Also, I’ve been adding “fairy lights” for the inside of the lanterns–you’ll see how in the video, but, here is a link to the fairy lights that I’ve been utilizing–they are very reasonably priced from Amazon and they have many different “flashing” options…Here is a link for my fairy lights :

By the way:  I explain and list all of the materials that I used for all of these creations in my videos, or if I don’t tell you where exactly I got them in the videos, I provide you a list in the description of the videos:

And here is my YouTube video tutorial:

I was so happy with how that lantern swag turned out that I was anxious to try another one, so next up I decided to take a cream colored lantern that I had sitting up on top of my desk and jazz it up a bit with a lantern swag. Here is what I came up with that time:

OMGosh, was I ever happy with that one too!! 🙂 And here is my YouTube tutorial:

Next up, it was time to switch all of my Patriotic decor out for what I’m now dubbing my “Cozy Country” or generic decor (I will share the entire transformation of my decor over in an upcoming blog).  First up, was my lantern centerpiece that I keep on my kitchen table. As most of you know, I reuse the same lantern and tray year round.  To change it up, I simply just switch out the decor that surrounds it and that I make for the top of it.  This time I again, kicked it up a notch and topped off this lantern centerpiece with a swag utilizing my new way to make a bow:

When I was creating that lantern centerpiece, I also did a couple of other centerpieces, one of which I added a bow swag.  Here are those two sweet little centerpieces, one for on the hearth, and one for on an accent table that sits between the kitchen and family room:

Here is my YouTube video where I show you how I created these centerpieces:

Lastly, I moved back out to the front porch and gathered up that red lantern again.  I wanted to make up a swag that would look great to go with my “Cozy Country” decor out on the front porch.  Here are a few pictures of how that turned out…I was honing my skills now…haha. 🙂

And here is my YouTube video where I show you how I created this pretty lantern:

I cannot tell y’all how absolutely thrilled I am that I have now added the new bow design to my list of crafts that I can create.  The possibilities are endless!  I have made a few wreaths with them too, I’ll highlight those in another blog post at a later date.  ANYway, I’m a happy girl over here, just zipping along switching out my Patriotic Decor for my Cozy Country decor (which will make transitioning over to my Fall Decor so much easier). 🙂

I hope that watching me step out of my nice safe little craft box will give y’all the confidence to do so yourselves!  Give one of these sweet new bows a try…you can do it!! And it is fun!!  And remember what I always say:

***In crafting there are no mistakes, only unique creations!***

~Until next time, y’all take good care!

Much Love!

~Arlynn ❤