Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Ok, the truth is that I didn't invent anything but I did have a necessity and so I decided to create a solution.  To get to the point I'll give you a little background info.

I picked out Y's Christmas dress really early this year.  By "picked out" I mean I saw it and I knew it was the one I wanted, I went in an bought it a few weeks later, which was still over a month ago.  But from the moment I saw the dress, I knew what I wanted for her hair when she wore the dress.  I wanted a Poinsettia clip that I could either use as a bow or with a black or white crocheted headband depending on my (and her) mood.



The Dress - it's paired with red tights and black shoes.

Seems pretty easy, right??  Yeah, I thought so too.  So I started checking out stores when I first saw "the dress," looking for the bow I wanted.  I never found it and I attributed this to the fact that I was still way ahead of the Christmas outfit game.  So I would look every now and again as I went in stores and I'd also peruse different Etsy shops as well as Ebay and Amazon.  Each time I'd come up disappointed.  And finally, about a week ago, a few options showed up on Etsy and Ebay but then I hit another wall...they were asking $5-10 plus shipping for ONE bow.  I didn't wanna spend that much on a single bow that I couldn't even hold or touch before deciding if I actually wanted it.  (Note:  had it been in-store for $5 I probably would have bought it but when you add in shipping fees - $3.25 to ship a bow that doesn't even weigh 2oz is crazy to me - I had to pass).
So I began looking at craft shops for flowers to make my own bow...this lead to more disappointment and frustration!!!  I kept coming up empty handed at every store I went to...until I went to the store I felt was least likely to have what I was looking for.  And I was right in my assumption, sort of.  They didn't have what I was looking for in the form that I was looking for it but they, unlike all the previous stores, did have something that would help me improvise and CREATE what I was looking for.  They had this:

Armed with the right tools and necessary embellishments, I created this:



The first was taken without flash and the second with flash, neither is very good but the lighting was pretty crappy.

And the best part is I only ended up costing me about $1 per bow and I made 12 bows, which I will be sharing with my niece and some friends here locally!