32 Ribbon + Rubber Band Headbands

I made this project forever ago, but I wanted to go back and take some pictures of the rubber bands and show you how to make the knot before I posted this because that's basically the only even remotely difficult part of this... and I think "difficult" is stretching it! But I LOVE these headbands - they were basically free (all stuff I had on hand and none of it expensive), they fit me perfectly, they took about 5 minutes to make, I got to use some of my favorite ribbons, and I can wear them with everything!

Also, I still really can't sew AT ALL and so if I can do this, anyone can... I thought about having Bella try it just to prove it, but she wanted to eat the thread whenever a scrap hit the floor, so I decided not to go that route... : )

Supplies

• Ribbon (I prefer grosgrain)
• Candle + lighter (or something to singe your ribbon)
• Needle and thread (and scissors)
• 2 hair rubber bands/ponytail holders
• Measuring tape (a ruler will work too - you can just cut a long strip of ribbon, measure it around your head and cut to size)

Instructions

I first made my little knot of rubber bands because I needed to know how long that was in order to measure the ribbon. The rubber band is this part of the headband:

So you want to grab two rubber bands (for the headbands I wear, I used two black ones, but wanted different colors to show you how to make the knot... thus the different colors) and pull one sort of under and through the other one. It's super-simple, but sounds complicated... so I recommend looking at these pictures! (And if anyone knows what this knot is called... I feel like I've heard it called something, but can't figure it out now... please let us all know!)

Basically, the blue is under the yellow and then you pull the blue up through the yellow...

Then, just pull both ends tight...

The whole process just looks like this:

Now that you have that knot done, you'll want to measure your head around where you want to wear the headband. Don't try to measure too tightly so that you can't open your eyes or have a headache later, but you do want it to be fairly tight. Use that total and subtract the length of your rubber band from your head size. Then add about two inches to that and that is how long you cut your ribbon. This is sort of a trial and error thing - I have one headband that I think is too small, but I'm sure I'll figure out something to do with it! I STRONGLY recommend you put some straight pins in there to hold it before you sew and then try it on to figure out the right length for you. 

After you cut your ribbon, singe the ends. I used a mistletoe candle (because I did this close to Christmas time, haha)...

Then you just wrap one end of your ribbon through one end of your rubber band knot and sew it in place! You could use hot glue, but I wanted to make sure mine would stay put because you obviously have to pull this thing wider to get it on your head, so it has to be pretty durable... because I was worried I also sewed this thing like crazy... probably far more than any normal person would or should....

Luckily, no one will ever really see this, so if you can't sew and make it all pretty, it doesn't matter (which is the only way I'll ever attempt to sew anything)! Repeat that for the other side of the rubber band knot with the other end of the ribbon...

And ta da! You have a ribbon headband made with scraps and done in five minutes!

I liked it so much, I made two more...

In case you were worried that they didn't look pretty on, I modeled it for you... in other news, it's exceedingly difficult to try to take pictures of the top of your head, so excuse how oddly angled they are... these were the best of quite an embarrassing number of tries!

I'll be linking up to a few of my favorite conferences!