Huckleberry Love: Ribbon Wrapped Carrot Hairclips

Friday, March 14, 2014

Ribbon Wrapped Carrot Hairclips

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We're already thinking about Easter here at Huckleberry Love. There are so many projects on our lists! I'm making some super cute Easter bunny dresses for my girls and a good friend's daughter, so I just had to top the outfit off with a super cute bow. Jamie and I get together quite frequently for bow nights, so we thought we'd try to come up with our own little carrot clip before her baby arrives next week. And these are the result!

Aren't they so sweet? And the girls LOVED them too :-) They weren't super difficult to make, but between The Bachelor finale and conversation, we spent the whole night on these babies. Eh, at least we had fun!

Want to make your own? Can't get started without:

3/8 inch green ribbon (we chose two coordinating greens, one polka dot, one with a stitch down the center)

1/4 inch dowel rods and wooden clothes pins

3/8 inch orange ribbon, plain or patterned

Needle and thread

Cardstock

Fraycheck or heat sealer

Alligator clip

Hot glue gun

We started with the Korkers. Preheat your oven to 325, yes you are going to bake ribbon - crazy right?!?

These korkers will make the leafy green stems on the carrot top. Clip the green ribbon onto a dowel and wrap like so. Make sure to keep it taut and close together, but not overlapping onto itself. When you get to the other end, trim the ribbon and clip it in place.

It should look like this. For two carrot clips, we used 3 dowel rods wrapped with ribbon. Since we know we'll end up using the extra, we just did a few whole spools of ribbon, giving us plenty of leftover. Place all of your wrapped dowels on a jelly roll pan and bake for 30 minutes.

When they're cool, and you'll really want to wait to handle them, go ahead and unwind the ribbon off. They'll magically hold their curl!

Cut them into 3"- 4" sections, and finish the edges with fray check.

Take a needle and thread it. You'll want your thread doubled at about 8", with a double knot at the end. Place sections of twisted ribbon onto the needle, stacking and adjusting to make a full Korker. Don't bring them down the thread one at a time. Pinch them together, holding them in place, and bring them down to the knot at the base of the string. Pass the needle back and forth through the centers a few times.

Now, if you were making a plain corker, you'd be finished sewing, but we're making carrot tops, so there's another step. I folded the corker in half, so it made a semi circle, and sewed it together to stay in place. Yay, your leafy stem is done!

Now, onto the carrot. You'll need to come up with a carrot shape and cut out some card stock. Lighter colored card stock, or orange would work best, but we worked with what we had on hand. You won't see it anyways.

At first, we tried just wrapping the whole thing with one strand of ribbon, but it wasn't laying nice and flat for us, so we ended up cutting individual rows and hot gluing them on one by one. Starting at the bottom...

Place ribbon, glue, cut.

Repeat.

And again...

Until you have the whole carrot covered, like so. Attach the greens to the back of the carrot, so a few curls fall in front. You may or may not hot glue your fingers in this step... be careful!

Next, line your alligator clip. Here's a great tutorial! And finally, hot glue the carrot to the clip. You're finished! Not so bad, right? And they would be super cute with the ruffled bunny shirt that Lydia made last year!