Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ribbon Storage

A few people have asked me to post pictures of my ribbon storage lately so I thought I would take a few shots. This has been a work in progress and I want to thank Becca at Amazing Paper Grace for her inspiration to get me more organized. I made a few changes to her system, but the thought is generally the same. I am so happy to be able to see my ribbon and as you know if you can't see you you wont use it. This has taken me a while but I packed up a bunch of spools and ribbon to take with me on my trip last weekend and had plenty of time in the car to wrap ribbon and get close to being done with this project.

The first shot is one of my small containers that I use for short lengths of ribbon. I use the tab punch and cut some small spools from card stock to wrap my shorter lengths and keep them closed with small rubber hair bands. These hold about a yard of ribbon each pretty nicely. Don't tell my girls I have been using their hair bands....ssssshhhhhh. I also have a second box, so don't think this all of my ribbon.


Now here is what I use for my larger lengths of ribbon. Rather than cutting pieces of mat board I decided to use some chipboard coasters I had in my stash as spools. I cut them in half and added the holes in order to hold the ribbon in place. It was a great way to use up the coasters I had....now I need more. Oooops. Who knew I would ever go through 200+ coasters much less be able to do it by using the majority of them for my ribbon. This was cheap and easy to do.

This is what a single spool looks like once rolled. Notice I tucked the tail of the ribbon through the hole in order to keep it in place. For some really wide ribbon I did use the hair bands again. For 1" ribbon the spools will hold over 5 yards without becoming too bulky. Thinner ribbon and sheer/satin will hold more per spool.

This is the 3 drawer storage cube I have. I have had this for years and it was most recently just holding some extra stuff that in reality was not put away properly. I cleaned it out and it is now FULL of ribbon. I will be buying another some time this week to hold more.

At this point I have the spools separated in 3 categories, patterned, grosgrain and satin/sheer. I think I will be arranging by color once I have the second cube and finish off these last few spools of ribbon I have left. Each drawer holds approximately 50 spools of ribbon. That is A LOT of ribbon!!!!

This is my patterned ribbon.
The satin sheer drawer. Do you think I have enough of the gray striped? I plan on using it for my Christmas cards this year. I don't know how I will use it yet, but it will be on there.
And now my grosgrain. I guess I need to flip a few of the spools over to keep all the tails pointing down so they don't get snagged. But this was after I just added all the spools I wrapped this weekend, so I was working quickly.
And there it is. Like I said before, I like that I can see all that I have and it is all the same size spool. I did like my old spool holders that were out on my desk, but those didn't work too well once the little fingers made their way up onto my desk. We had a few ribbon capers last year. These drawers and boxes are stored in my cabinet now, along with everything else I use, baby locks securely in place. :)

Tell me what you think.

6 comments:

  1. Okay Ms Kimme, come do mine now! I need organization and you look like you have it. I want it.

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  2. Wow, that looks awesome....come on over anytime and do mine ;)!!

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  3. Love the storage system. I may just have to try that here as well.

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  4. awesome!!!! I might have to do this myself....besides making my crazy ribbon collection look pretty it will help me use the TONS of coasters I have been hoarding :)

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  5. Very nice! I like it. I bought ribbon ring tags at CHA but I still haven't put all my ribbon on it. OOPS. I'll get around to it. But I had my dad install two curtain rods on my wall. One will be for my punches and one I can hang my loose ribbon from.

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I would love to hear what you think :)