Organizational Blog Hop!! TODAY!

Hi and welcome to the organizational blog hop! I am so excited that you took the time to stop by and see how I have organized my ribbons and fibers. Please take a minute and leave me a comment so that I know you stopped by. I am going to send some new ribbon to one of the reader's drawn at random, on April 30, 2010 from one of the comments left between now and then on my section of the blog hop. If you would like to check out some other SCRAPTASTIC ideas for organizing your scrapbooking supplies, please hop to the all of the other blogs and be sure to leave a comment for them too!

Organizational Blog Hop April 19, 2010

Photograph Storage by Leanne - http://scrappingamma.blogspot.com/

Embellishment Storage by Jo - http://buckeyejo.blogspot.com/

YOU ARE HERE!! Ribbon & Fiber Storage by Shellie: http://clearlythemostcreativescrapbookers.blogspot.com/

Stamp Storage by Wendy - http://www.myscrapbookingblog.com/

Ink Pad Storage by Ramona - http://create-with-joy.blogspot.com

Pen & Pencil Storage by Jeanne Marie - http://missjeannemania.blogspot.com/

Sticker, Die Cuts and Rub-On Storage by Amanda - http://notimecrafting.wordpress.com/

Tools Storage and Paper Storage by Mary - http://mbryt1.blogspot.com/

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Ribbon and Fiber Storage

When I began scapbooking I was very limited on money and supplies (hey, I'm still limited on money and supplies) and stickers were my main embellishments. Slowly my embellishments grew the more I scrapped and the more I became involved in Close To My Heart, card making, and scrapbooking. I bought those tiny ribbon rolls first and then moved on to the bigger rolls as my skills grew. I joined the Personal Scrapper and went to some card workshops and slowly I started accumulating several different random varying lenghts of ribbon. I just stuck them into a ziploc bag. Soon my ribbon scraps outgrew the bag and I started to put them in a huge glass jar. It looks pretty, with all the ribbon swirling around the glass like a delicious lollipop! The ribbons and fibers mingled and soon tangled and it was very frustrating to find that Just Right piece of ribbon. My arm was swallowed up by the rainbow of ribbon when I began a new project. I had to do something, so I took one of the free priority mail boxes from the post office and I started to cut. I cut dozens and dozen of little cardboard strips about 2" x 3". Before long I was surrounded by a thin brown sea of cardboard. I called my girls up to help me start the daunting task of organizing that rainbow! We sat for a few hours, pulling one ribbon from the jar at a time and winding it around it's placard. Finally I took each ribbon, sorted them according to their color and placed them into clear shoe boxes from the Dollar Tree. Now I could clearly see each color and easily match it to the project I was working on. I grew frustrated with this whenever I would reach for the ribbon box and go to pull out a ribbon, several others would tag along and I was constantly straightening up my boxes.

Take Two on Ribbon and Fiber Organization....
One day I was at Craft Warehouse and I found some 3x3 plastic ribbon organizers. These were 3x3 pieces of plastic that you could wind your ribbon around on them. Ok, but that is what I was already doing with cardboard, so that wasn't much progress. Then, my sister, who has tons and tons and oodles upon oodles of scrapping embellishments, told be about her idea to use the 3x3 cards, cut them in half and then cut slits in each side to hold several ribbons at once. Sounds great! Unfortunately I am a very visual learner and I could not for the life of me, figure7e out what she was talking about. Then I went over to her house and saw what she meant. That helped a lot! She has an entire wall of ribbon and has each roll carefully placed on rows upon rows of dowels. She then showed me her ribbon scraps, beautifully organized onto the plastic, now 1 1/2" x 3" piece of ribbon card. She cut the ribbon csrd in half along the zig zagged line that runs up the middle of the card. Next she cut lines on each side of the card diagonally opposite each other, to hold each individual piece of ribbon. Finally she punched a hole into the top of each card so that she could put them together on a hinged ring! Genius! So I went to work making my own ribbon cards. I cut 4 slits in my cards whereas my sister only cut 3. Personal preference. Once my ribbons were put onto the cards, I slid each card onto a hinged ring, according to colors. I have 3 rings right now, full of varying lengths of ribbon. Recently I went to a crop and I took a paper towel tube and punched out six holes (3 on each side of the tube). I took my rings off of my storage unit and slid them onto the paper towel tube and took them to the crop! At the crop I noticed other people had taken those pants hangars and slid their ribbons onto the hangars and then hung them up on the wall. Super Cool!!!

I still use my other methods too...as much as I love the card method, it does not work well with fibers,they snag too much. I still organize my fibers on the cardboard according to color.

I keep a much smaller ribbon jar on top of my desk and when I finish with my ribbon, if I have some leftover, I put it in the jar and then once a week I hang the loose ribbons onto my hanging ribbon cards.

I store my little ribbon spools in a Close To My Heart Ribbon Organizer. My medium ribbon spools are kept on a spice rack that I found at the Goodwill and painted to match my scraproom. I store my larger ribbon spools on a rain gutter! It is awesome! We bought a small section of a plastic rain gutter and I put it on my shelf. It holds the spools and you can easily pull the ribbon off of the spool because the gutter is wide enough to let the spool turn around so you can pull off as much as you need.

Well, that's how I store my ribbons and fibers (sorry there is not too much on fibers, I don't use them very much). Thanks for taking the time to stop by my blog! Be sure to leave a comment so that you can have a chance to win some new ribbons from me! Please leave your contact information so that I can contact you if you win! Have a scrappy day and come back soon!