Say Goodbye To Bland Curtain Ties — Grab A Craft Room Staple For This Clever DIY

If you've ever wanted to tie back the curtains in your home — to allow more light in or give you a better view — then you may have browsed through plenty of bland curtain ties designed to do their job while fading into the background. However, that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Instead, there is a way to repurpose simple craft room pipe cleaners into charming, personalized curtain ties that can revamp your curtains instantly. While pipe cleaners can be bent and twisted into a variety of different shapes, one popular design for DIY curtain ties is flowers.

To do this yourself and say goodbye to boring curtain ties, all you will need is a collection of pipe cleaners in a variety of colors. Make sure to think about what colors you want the petals to be, as well as the colors of the stems, leaves, and inner stamen, too. 

How many pipe cleaners you will need depends on the design you want to create. For example, if you want to do one large flower with a single stem — which is great for a less busy, more laid-back design — you will likely need around four pipe cleaners for each petal, one for each leaf, one or two to make some stamen for the middle of the flower, then four or five more to create the long tie which goes around the curtain. If you opt for a design with lots of flowers, you may need even more. Once you have your pipe cleaners assembled, you can explore these other simple ways to DIY a stylish curtain tieback for your home.

There are a variety of ways to do this DIY, depending on the colors you want to use, the flowers you want to emulate, and how thick your curtains are. However, there are a few tips that can help you make charming — and effective — curtain ties. First, start by pulling your curtain together with your hand and using a piece of wire to work out how big your tie needs to be. Then, when crafting the green stem that will function as the base of the tie, it is a good idea to wrap pipe cleaners around that central piece of wire. This will give it more strength and body, making it easier to bend into shape as needed.

You can then start crafting the flowers themselves. Take the pipe cleaners you want for the petals and bend one until it resembles the right shape, using more of the same color to fill out the center. You can also try using a different color for the edges of the petals to make them pop. Hot glue your petals together so that they sit in a layered circle, just like a real flower, and hot glue on some little rolled-up pipe cleaners for the stamen. 

Then, use green ones to create leaves. You can leave one pipe cleaner long at the bottom of each leaf so they can be wrapped around the central stem, or you can hot glue both the flower and the leaves to the main wire — and voila! You have a budget-friendly way to add luxury to any room by tying your curtains up in personalized floral ties.