Since we’re getting married on a patio on a cliff over the ocean, we thought it might be a bad idea to have our guests chuck grains at us and thereby feed dried rice to all kinds of birds, fish, and otherwise. I considered flower petals, seeds, confetti, etc., but either it’s gonna induce a sneeze fest or be a bitch to clean up. Then I saw ribbon wands! Wow! What a wonderful idea!
It took about 3.5 hours to make 50 ribbon wands, which wasn’t so bad. Here’s how you can make them yourself…
What you will need:
- Ribbon! I used two 4 ft sections per wand that I cut ahead of time and separated by color.
- Wood dowels. I got 12″ long, 3/8″ diameter ones.
- Eye screws
- A thumb tack or push pin
- A hammer
- A glue gun
- A candle
Get started by turning a wood dowel on end and push the thumb tack into the center as far as you can. If you can get it almost all the way in, then you’re good. Pull the tack out. If not, tap the tack into the dowel almost all the way in.
Then, pull the tack out. You should end up with a hole like this.
You make that starter hole to avoid splitting like in this picture.
Once you have the hole, take an eye screw and screw it into the hole. It gets kinda rough after a while so you may want to wear work gloves.
After that is in place get two 4 ft sections of ribbon in the colors of your choosing. The ends are probably frayed and that is where the candle comes in.
Hold the ribbon over the flame just long enough to melt the frays and seal the end of the ribbon.
Pull both ribbons up until the eye is in the middle of the ribbons.
At this point you’re going to tie them into a loose knot.
Make sure your glue gun is hot and add a spot where the ribbon and the eye meet.
Then pull the ribbons tight (Carefully though! Hot glue is hot) and you’re done!!
You can add so many things to make these even more fabulous like bells and flowers, but we are just fine with these as they are.
