Super Easy DIY Hair Accessories (make great gifts)

Being that this is my first post I would like to point something out that I'm sure most of you will be able to figure out anyways. My posts are not professional pictures attached to professional instructions. These are things I did myself at home and they are not perfect. 

Most of the pins I see seem to look like catalog ads rather than homemade projects so I hope you might find my more down to earth approach a little refreshing. ;)

Here we go....

This is one of the easiest projects ever..

What you'll need:

Plain barrettes or hair pins (not bobby pins, the ones I used were metal and flat, just a few centimeters wide). I found mine at Michael's in the bridal section 

Modge Podge ( I used Matte on some and Gloss on the other)

A small sponge brush (Dollar Tree has multi packs for $1)

Scissors or a paper trimmer

Patterned paper (roughly 30 cents a sheet at craft stores, you can print your own for free, or you can take pieces of magazines, catalogs, books, etc)

 In this picture you can see the brand I used and what they looked like before. I outlined the size of the hair pin then cut small strips of my paper (this particular paper was a small 3" x 2" notepad I got for $0.99, the pattern was on the back of the blank side of the sheet). I applied a small amount of modge podge onto the hairpin and then placed the paper. Then I put another layer of modge podge on top the paper and voila! Now you have beautiful hairpins for a fraction of the retail cost!

These are the traditional barrettes. The concept is pretty much the same. I used scrapbook paper, which is a little thinker than most paper, for these. I got a book of 25 6x6 pages for $5 dollars, which enough to do a thousand hair barrettes or use the 24 left over pages for more awesome diy projects I plan to include later. :)

So with these you just outline the size you need and cut out the strips again. I made mine a little longer than they needed to be and then fold the excess along each edge but you could just cut it to size too. I only did mine that way because it was easier than trying to cut the paper the exact size every time. Then you just repeat the earlier instructions: Modge podge barrette... Apply paper.. Modge podge again. Done!

I made a ton of them and gave them out to all my coworkers. Handmade gifts are especially thoughtful so no one tends to notice how little it cost.