When Miss G was born full-term the day after my due date, making sure she met milestones reasonably ‘on time’ wasn’t something that was even on my radar… We simply trusted that she’d develop new skills as she was supposed to and celebrated them when they came along. With Sam, our little preemie babe born 27 weeks into my pregnancy, it’s a different story… Thankfully he’s done remarkably well in his first year home from the NICU, but his development has been closely monitored every step of the way and I’m much more aware of what he’s supposed to be doing at each stage. So when our baby boy developed a fascination with the hook-and-loop fasteners on Sister’s well-loved school sneakers, the first thing that popped into my mind? ‘Ooooh – what awesome fine motor practice!’ Seriously, this is how my mama brain thinks now. {Also, did you know that when we use the term “velcro”, we’re actually using a brand name to describe hook-and-loop-fasteners?? Me neither, but the team over at VELCROⓇ Brand kindly let me know that it’s much like using the term “kleenex” to describe all tissues… You learn something every day I guess!}
{this post contains affiliate links}
Making one of these sweet little ribbon wands for Miss G has long been on my project list, and since her last dance class took place today, it was the perfect motivation to not only make one for Grae, but to make one to gift to each of her little friends too. 
If you poke around the internet, you’ll find tons of different styles of ribbon wands and methods to make them, but when we stumbled upon these adhesive picture hanging strips (available at hardware stores), we came up with a way of our own. 
First off, we took wide satin ribbon and cut it into strips approximately 125 centimetres long, cutting one end straight across and one end at an angle. Then, using a lighter, we sealed off the cut edges.
Next, we took the adhesive backing off of the picture hangers and firmly attached them to the straight end of the ribbon. At this point I was going to sew the picture hanger onto the ribbon for added security, but the adhesive was so strong that it wasn’t necessary. 
With our ribbons ready, we moved onto the wand part of the project. Using painter’s tape, we taped off our 6 inch dowels about a third of the way up.
Then using crafter’s acrylic in colours that coordinated with our ribbons, we painted the bottom third of each dowel with two coats of paint.
When the paint was good a dry, we carefully removed the painter’s tape to reveal the handle part of our wands.
Next, we used a tack to poke holes in the top ends of the dowels. 
Then it was time for these guys – small eye hooks available at all hardware stores.
We screwed the eye hooks into the recently made holes by starting the process by hand and using pliers part way through. (One thing to be mindful of at this point is that if your eye hooks are on the larger side (like ours), you don’t want to force them down into the dowel too far. You’ll get a pretty good sense on when you should stop twisting, and please do so. Spoken from experience, if you force them down too much, the dowels will split open.)
Your wand should now look like this. 
Now the final step… We hooked the metal picture hanging hook onto the eye hooks and use pliers to squeeze the hook shut tightly.
And there you have it – a pretty little ribbon wand.
In order to transport them to dance class without a big tangly mess happening, we simply wrapped the ribbons around the wands, and secured them with a bit of polka dotted washi tape.
