Nursery Project: DIY Bow Holder

Today, I'm going to show you one of the projects I completed for our daughter's nursery.  I'll share a few more nursery projects with you later.  This one is a bow holder I made for the nursery.

Honestly, I took a gamble on the Little Miss.  When we found out she was a girl and we started putting together the nursery.  I just had a feeling she would have lots of hair and would need something to hold all of her bows.  The Little Mister was born with a lot of hair, and the same was true for Mr. C and I when we were babies.  How could she not have a head full of hair?  So I took a risk and made this bow hanger for her closet door before she was born.  This was one of those projects I knew I would eventually add to the blog.

I used an unfinished wooden plaque, an unfinished chipboard letter (slightly smaller than the plaque), four strips of ribbon (cut a yard long each), two six inch long pieces of ribbon, two paint colors, a strip of Velcro, a hot glue gun and a staple gun.  I purchased a thin wooden letter "K" for her first initial. I had already started painting the letter when the picture below was taken, but you can see how thin it is.

I painted the plaque with light lavender acrylic paint, and the letter with thunder blue colored paint.  Her nursery colors are navy, lavender, gray and white.  The colors of the nursery were inspired by a piece of fabric I found when looking for her crib bedding.  I later did a few other things with this Navy and Lavender Ikat Damask fabric from Carousel Designs, I'll share those projects with you in the future.

Once the plaque and letter dried, I secured the letter to the plaque using a hot glue gun.

In the picture above, I had the plaque laying on top of the ribbon so I could see how I wanted the long ribbons spaced.  I hot glued the four pieces of yard-long ribbon to the side of the plaque I designated as the bottom of the holder.

I was careful to keep the spacing as even as possible, even though I did not measure the distance between the ribbons.

This is what it looked like after the long ribbons were attached to the plaque.

I cut the Velcro into little half inch pieces, one for each of the long ribbons.  The adhesive was removed from one side of the Velcro and attached to the end of each long ribbon at the end farthest from the plaque.  Then, I folded up that end by about an inch.  Again, I didn't measure exactly.  This created the loops at the bottom of the holder, used for holding headbands.

To create something to hang it on, I tied a small knot at the end of each of the two shorter pieces of the ribbon.  Then, I placed them close to the top edge of the plaque and stapled just above where the knot rested.  I did it this way to make the ribbon hanger more sturdy and ensure it would be capable of holding the weight of the hair accessories.

For even more security, I added a small dab of hot glue at the edge of the plaque and pressed the ribbon onto it.  This also keeps the bow holder from bobbing loosely away from the plaque.

After securing those two pieces to the plaque, I tied them into a bow.  I used a command hook on the door of her closet and hung the holder on it.  This bow holder is functional and a cute addition to the nursery.

This is how it looks now, full of bows and headbands!