How to make a Gift Bow

Here are the instructions I promised for the gift bow featured in my last post. Sorry for the delay, I've been busy making inaugural plans (Yay!) and juggling my other projects. 

The nice thing about this project is that you can use whatever material you like, not just newspaper, which was brought to my attention by a reader (see 1/05/09 comments). My initial intent, as in many of my projects, was to find a creative way to recycle materials around my apartment. Enjoy!

For my first official blog post, I'd like to brag, not so much about the gifts I brought people this season, but how I wrapped them. I combined my frugal (read: cheap) nature and my inclination towards recycling to get creative. 

I wrapped gifts in old newspaper...which is nothing new...folks have

 been wrapping stuff in newspaper for decades (i.e. raw meat, press and curls, doggie poo). But I like to think I took it a step further by creating ribbons and bows from cut strips of paper in styles similar to those you buy at the store. Take a look:

I did a number of other styles, but these are the best.

I'm quite proud of myself.

While I'm sure people can figure out how I did it, I'll post a diagram of how I made the ribbons anyway.