Tuesdays Tip #56 Cheap And Easy Christmas Extras

This is a follow up to my Christmas Extras post.

I know that a lot of groomers don't have the time, or are not into making their own bows.

Here is a quick idea if you do not have a lot of extra time to make Christmas bows.

Pre-made bows from the Dollar store.

This is a sheet of 18  (2 inch wide) bows for $1.

These could make great ear bows.

This sheet of bows are a little larger. ( 3 1/2 inches wide)

This size would be great for bow ties for small and medium sized dogs.

I would strongly suggest that you do not use these bows with the wire twist tie that they come with.

I used some pretty yarn and beads to dress up the larger bows for bow ties.

First I took the bow apart.

For the bow tie, I put aside the tail piece and just worked with the top bow.

I also discarded the twist tie.

Then I cut a piece of the pretty yarn that had some shinny garland going through it.

The piece of yarn pictured here was too long, but I was not sure exactly how much I would need at first.

It turned out that about a 6 in 7 inch piece was enough.

I needed the yarn to be long enough to wrap around the bow several times, and also leave enough yarn behind to be able to tie the bow tie to a dogs collar.

 For this bow tie I also cut a section of two mardis gras beads.

Then I wrapped the yarn around the bow and beads, tying it off at the back of the bow.

You could also just wrap the yarn with no beads and it would still look nice.

If you only want to use yarn, try other colors like silver, gold, or green.

There you go!

A quick and easy bow tie.

Just tie it to the dogs collar.

 The smaller bows, for ears, also has twist ties holding them together.

Because I want to use these in ears, I will be putting a rubber band around them.

I will also leave the tail on the bows when I put them back together.

Simply loop one end of the rubber band over the opposite end and then pull tight.

Make sure that you pull the rubber band to the back of the bow.

 I didn't want the rubber band to show on the front of the bow, so I wrapped some yarn around the bow to cover the rubber band, then tied it off in the back and cut the extra yarn off.

 I also cut the tails of the bow shorter and rounded them off.

There you go.

A very quick and simple bow.

Of course, if you want to go crazy, you can always add some bling!!!

Hope that this helps. :)