I spotted this How Does She tutorial and decided to give it a try since I had plenty of red, white and blue ribbon left over from my recent patriotic hair clip projects and have been looking for ideas I can use on a mantel when we move to our new house.  While watching a movie with the hubs, I cut a stack of 4″ pieces of each type of ribbon.  I had more of some and less of others since I was using up what I had on hand, but I had enough of each color to make it work so I figured I’d just spread out the pieces of the lower quantities more to make it appear even.

I cut a 3′ piece of larger ribbon to be the base, then started tying the pieces onto this main ribbon, randomly choosing pieces of different varieties and colors – basically just eyeballing what I thought the next piece should be.  Luckily the base ribbon was the first piece I had cut off that spool and it had the sticker that held the end down still attached so I used that to hold the end away from me on the arm of the easy chair.  It did take the entire movie to complete but it wasn’t extremely difficult.

I’m tickled pink red, white and blue at the final product!  The one thing I would do differently next time is make it longer.  Three feet just didn’t seem to work for many of the places I thought of putting the garland.  I ended up placing it across this octagon window in our family room which seemed to work pretty well.  I also found that I liked it better when I twisted the direction of groups of the tied ribbons to give it a little more dimension.

I’m planning to make more just like this but in different color varieties as photography props!  I’m thinking a pink one for girls, blue for boys, fall colors, maybe a rainbow or mardi gras colors, orange and black for Halloween and of course red and green for Christmas!

Once I get going I may even make a stock of them to sell to other photographers now that I’ve set up my own Etsy shop, (where I also have a stock of patriotic hair accessories!).  I just have to decide what to charge for this new item.  I saw a fabric garland done in the same tie-style at Michaels the other day for $14.99, but I don’t think it was a pretty or vibrant as this one.  I’m thinking $15 would be a fair price, especially if I custom make one with requested colors.  And because they are so light weight, it shouldn’t cost much more for shipping.

What do you think?  Would you use one at a photo session you were paying for or for decor at a party you were hosting and if so, do you think that’s a fair price?  What colors would you like to see?  Or better yet, anyone want to place a custom order right now? 🙂