Last week­end I bought some plain plas­tic head­bands for my tea rose project, but the colours and tex­ture work out so I just end­ed up using an elas­tic head­band I had for the rose.

The plas­tic head­bands were 4 for a $1 from a cor­ner store near­by. I tried them on for fun and was sur­prised to find that the red one actu­al­ly com­ple­ments my hair­style quite nice­ly (I don’t wear red very often). Then Mike took this pic­ture to test out his new phone…

Then he said, “you look like a car­toon char­ac­ter with that head­band, but I don’t know from which cartoon.”

This one, per­haps? :D

 

If you haven’t seen it, Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice is an ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Hayao Miyaza­ki. It was released in 1989, and, Accord­ing to Miyaza­ki, “the movie touch­es on the gulf that exists between inde­pen­dence and reliance in Japan­ese teenage girls. Going far beyond com­ing of age themes, the work deals with the nature of cre­ativ­i­ty and tal­ent, and the cen­tral dif­fi­cul­ty every per­son faces in becom­ing them­selves, whether through luck, hard work or con­fi­dence” (source).

It’s a time­less piece. I find myself in Kik­i’s shoes time and time again, try­ing to find my own voice in new surroundings.

And now, with Fil­bert the cat in the pic­ture, I find myself in Kik­i’s head­band, just miss­ing a bow! (Kik­i’s cat is named Jiji, by the way.)

There’s no way I can pull off wear­ing a giant bow on my head. So per­haps I can make a small, styl­ish, grown-up-ish bow. Like these ones, per­haps.

The prob­lem is that the red head­band is made of a shiny plas­tic, and so rib­bons or cro­chet would look out of place. Pleather (aka faux leather)? Vinyl? Trust me, if I have a red vinyl purse or any­thing like that I can cut from, I would go straight to it. But I don’t.

What I have is this -

It comes in a roll -

It’s super sticky on the one side -

It’s shiny on the other -

It comes in all the bright colours -

Give up?

ELECTRICAL TAPE! :D

And here’s how I made a bow with it.

I used: a bit of elec­tri­cal tape, a head­band, scis­sors, a ruler, and hot glue gun.

1. Cut a piece of tape about 5″ long, turn it sticky side up and fold it length­wise about 1/3 of it toward the cen­tre (to keep the fold straight, it helps to start fold­ing in the cen­tre, then work your way out toward each end).

2. Fold down the oth­er long edge in the same man­ner. There would be air bub­bles trapped in the folds. I used my thumb­nail to gen­tly scrape and push the air out of the folds (again, it helps to start scrap­ing from the cen­tre, and work your way out toward each end).

3. Nar­row the ends by cut­ting off the cor­ners, so when it’s fold­ed under to form the bow the edges won’t show.

4. Fold the plas­tic strip in half, make a light crease, unfold, and mark the half way point with a pencil.

5. Fold each end toward the cen­tre, 2–3mm from the half way mark.

6. Tape down the ends with a nar­row piece of tape.

7. Cut anoth­er piece of tape about 3″ long, repeat the first two steps, except leave a 2–3mm gap in the cen­tre when fold­ing the long edges, thus mak­ing a wider strip.

8. Turn the bow so that the ends of the strip are fac­ing down, then hot glue it to the head­band. For­got to take a pho­to of this step, sorry ^^;

Place the wider strip on the cen­tre of the bow, extend­ing about 3/4″ to one side, like so… (the exposed adhe­sive on the back of the strip will help keep its place before it’s glued down in the next step)

9. Turn to the under­side of the head­band, fold down the short end of the wider strip and hot glue it down, push­ing the end into the space between the 2 rows of combs.

10. Fold the longer end over and mark where it over­laps with the oth­er end but does not extend beyond the width of the headband.

11. Cut where it’s marked and hot glue it down.

 

And we’re done! :D Pret­ty sim­ple, eh?

 

It com­pletes the pic­ture :D

 

I’m actu­al­ly real­ly hap­py with the way it turned out, which is sur­pris­ing because I’m not real­ly a bow per­son. But I love how it match­es the colour and the plas­tic feel of the head­band per­fect­ly. Like the bow came with the head­band when it was bought, not added on lat­er. With elec­tri­cal tape.

My favourite part has got to be the elec­tri­cal tape :D

I was lucky with the red; it may be tricky to match the exact shades of elec­tri­cal tape to head­band with oth­er colours, but I imag­ine black or white would work per­fect­ly. But then the colours don’t have to be matchy-matchy nei­ther. What about a black bow on a white head­band? Or yel­low bow on a blue head­band? I imag­ine the plas­tic head­bands can be bought cheap­ly in most dol­lar stores, and so can elec­tri­cal tape :)

This made me real­ly hap­py last night. I hope you’re find­ing things through­out your day that make you hap­py too! :D