"Cheer" (Flag) Bows

As a coach for a high school flag team, one of the things I've tried to incorporate my craftiness in would be making hair bows for the kids.  It is a quick and easy craft that gets them loads of compliments.  There are youtube tutorials everywhere.  And if you have the right Michael's coupon, you can make bows for an entire nation.  Okay, that's not true.  But a spool of fancy ribbon with a 50% off coupon can be about $6 and make about 8-9 bows.  8-9 bows!!  I don't even have that many kids on the team!  Plus, the bows will be special because no other team will have it and you can say they are custom made and be all private school sorts of fancy.  So yeah, $6 for a single bow that you  buy from your uniform vendor or $6 worth of ribbon, enough for one of a kind bows to tress a small nation?  The latter, for sure!

The kids go to Nationals every spring to compete, and so I wanted to make something super duper sparkly to go with their performance wear.  Obviously, it needed to be gold and even more obviously it needed to have glitter.  The first year, I chose this gold glitter ribbon, with bigger, hexagonal holographic glitter embedded in so it'll looks super sparkly in the right light at the right angle.  The width of the ribbon was about 1.5, which wasn't as big as I wanted it to be, so I layered it with a white satin ribbon, to get that contrast in there and make it look bigger.  They turned out awesome.

The second year, I was contemplating making the same kind of bows.  But, during the Christmas season I saw this ridiculous gold sequin ribbon that I couldn't pass down. And, it was about 2 inches wide so it didn't need another layer of white ribbon.  These turned out awesome as well.

We had one boy on the team, so he didn't need to have a bow.  At the end of the season I made him a bowtie just for fun.

Both ribbons I used were wired since they are originally made for gift wrapping, but because its a flag team, I don't think its a big deal.  Cheer might be a different story, since there's a safety issue with all the tumbling and the stunting happening, but I don't know what the rules are for that.

Materials used:  ribbon (about 30 inches per bow), mini cable ties, ponytail holders that match hair
Tools: scissors, glue gun, cardboard about 7inches wide to use as a template