striped bow garland

we are renting a home with eight bedrooms. and if {not if, when…} we ever move i doubt we’ll ever have this many bedrooms again! there are four bedrooms on the second floor + four bedrooms on the third floor.  when we arrived last summer i was still skeptical about the safety of living in a bigger city, so i made all our kids choose bedrooms on the second floor near the master bedroom so in case of an emergency i had everyone close to me.  this forced our older two daughters to share a room because neither of them wanted to be in a room with toys from their younger siblings! ha! this room-sharing lasted for our first seven months in bean town.  now that we’ve been here almost nine months, and kiana, our oldest spent those first seven months begging for her own room, we finally let her move up to the third floor a couple of months ago. she is now in one of our guest rooms. not to worry future-guests, we’ll kick her out of there if you want to visit!

kiana was allowed to move upstairs on one condition – i didn’t want to spend any money fixing up the room to her specifications. she had to take it or leave it. {remember: we’re renting & i don’t like spending money on fixing this place up!}

she took it. happily.

she stayed happy for about a month, then the requests to re-decorate started… “what if we…” “what if I…” “do you think we could just paint…” “what if i pay for this…” “what if i help…”

you get the idea. i give our teenager credit for being dedicated to her requests. she made us such a good offer, we really couldn’t turn her down. with her money she offered to pay for the painting + make her curtains. she only asked that i offer my design-advice + make something cute for the room. husband and i agreed.

this was my “cute” contribution —

i used left-over ribbon from kiana’s birthday breakfast, and only had to purchase the black and white striped ribbon. {all from JoAnn’s fabric & craft store} this project was very simple. i made various sizes of bows all hot-glued together. i think if you look closely you can guess at how it is assembled, so i chose not to take step-by-step photos. if you want to make one of these garlands & have questions – please feel free to email me. jane@prolook.com – i’d be happy to help.

to hang the garland on her wall, i used some anthropology hardware knobs i had from our last home. husband drilled holes, and we just screwed the knobs right into the wall! it was perfect. then, i tied the garland on each side. voila! a very easy, inexpensive bow garland considering i already had all the supplies but the striped ribbon. this garland brings together all the other design aspects of her new room. it’s a very simple, teenage-girlie room.

we are almost done with her bedroom makeover & i hope to share more soon. stay tuned!

xoxo.