It's a question that I see pop up every so often - how do you tie your knots so they lay how you want them? For me, knot tying takes me back to my Girl Scout days both when I was learning and also later down the line when I was teaching this skill to younger Scouts. The two basic knots you should know about for paper crafting? The square (or reef) knot and the granny knot. Now, if you do a internet search for these 2 kinds of knots, you will most likely find the examples done with ropes, which gives you an idea of what it looks like if you want to go sailing or camping, but not much help when it comes to tying one with ribbon on a card. I am going to walk you through, step by step, to give you a better picture of how to tie the knots and how to make them work on your projects.
Both knots are basically two overhand knots on top of one another. An overhand knot is the knot you tie your shoes with. The difference in the end will be how your ribbon lays on your card.
Let's start off with a square knot, which is the most common knot that I use when tying ribbon onto cards.
There's a little poem I remember for square knots: right over left and left over right, makes a knot neat and tidy and tight.
(click any of the pictures to see them larger)
When you start to tie your first knot (overhand), you have the right (red) go over the left (blue).
Once the first knot is done, do the second left (red) over right (blue) - the colors switched sides after you tied the first knot.
Here is your finished square knot with ribbon. Notice that the tails are laying parallel to the rest of the ribbon. When you tie a square knot, the tails of your ribbon will lay this way.
You can tie a square knot starting with the left crossing over the right - just do the opposite (right over left) when you tie the second knot.
Now for a granny knot. Very similar to a square knot...
Right over left for your first knot (red over blue.)
And then for your second knot you will go right over left again (blue over right this time.)
And here is your finished granny knot. This time, the tails of the knot lay perpendicular to the rest of the ribbon.
So now you can have a little more control over how your ribbon is going to work on your card. For the card on the right, I did a square knot. The card on the left uses a granny knot because if I had done a square knot, the ribbon end would have covered up my tree image.
Practice makes perfect, and the more you practice your knot technique, the better you will know what you are going to get when you are tying ribbons onto your cards and other paper crafting projects.
Noel Tree Cards
stamps: Holiday Tree, Giga Guidelines (Papertrey Ink)
ink: Dark Chocolate, Ripe Avocado, Fresh Snow (Papertrey Ink)
cardstock: white, kraft, Spring Moss, In Bloom (Papertrey Ink)
other: Spring Moss saddle stitch (Papertrey Ink), Super scallop circle (Marvy), 3/4" circle punch (EK Success), white pearls (Kaisercraft), clear embossing powder, glitter, heat embossing tools, dimensionals