MFT February Creative Chat

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It's time for the MFT Creative Chat. The My Favorite Things Design Team Creative Chat is a monthly feature, where we are challenged to explore our creative spaces and share valuable organizational methods, tools, and shopping strategies with you. You'll be able to peek into our creative spaces, ask questions, and share your own ideas in the MFT forum.  This month, we were asked the following questions: 

 

Show us how you store your ribbon.

What are your favorite types of ribbon?

Any tips or tricks on how to use ribbon on stamped creations?

Visit Kim's Blog for a full list of designers that have taken up the challenge and get ready to delve into the minds of our creative team.

OK, ready for a tour of my ribbon storage? I have a lot of pictures for you to see, so get comfy.

First of all, here’s a fabulous rack my DH built for me for ribbon that I want to keep on the roll. It’s attached to the door of my stamp room using otherwise wasted space. I keep scissors and a measuring tape handy on a hook. I just love looking at all those colors, LOL! At the very bottom, I store all my 1/8” ribbon rolls. It’s too narrow to wind and I use it to package cards I sell on Etsy.

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In this close up, you can see there’s a dowel just above each shelf that the ribbon is passed under. I can pull off what I want and it keeps the whole roll from flying off the shelf.

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To get the most in my space for all other ribbon, I adopted this system that I saw on Becca Feeken’s blog a couple of years ago. I love it! You will notice that I can see every ribbon I have at a glance. I really like being able to do that (otherwise I forget what I *do* have) and this does the trick. Each color of ribbon is wrapped on a cardboard “bobbin”, secured with a tiny rubber band, then “filed” in a drawer of a Sterlite tote. More about that later.

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I arrange my ribbon by colors. In this drawer I have blacks, grays,  whites, and creams. Metallic silver is considered gray.

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This drawer has browns, yellows, and the start of oranges. Metallic gold is considered yellow.

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This drawer finishes the oranges and goes on to rust, then the start of the reds.

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In this drawer I keep the rest of the reds and the start of pinks.

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In this drawer you’ll see the rest of the pinks.

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This drawer has purples going into true blues.

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This drawer has more aqua blues and the bluer greens.

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This drawer contains all the yellow greens.

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In this drawer, I keep all my multicolor/holiday ribbons.

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OK, now for a little about HOW I do it. I get this mat board weight board at Office Max. It comes in 30” x 20” sheets and I have them cut it into 15” x 10” pieces for me so I can handle it on my paper cutter.

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Then I cut each section into 2” x 2 1/2” “bobbins”. I get 5 strips and 6 “bobbins” from each strip. So, you can see you can get a lot of bobbins from one sheet of this board. If I remember correctly, it’s about $6 for each board and they charge a few dollars to cut it into quarters. I also use this board for the dividers in each drawer. They’re 12” long by 2” high. When I was first implementing this system, I taped the dividers to the bottom of the drawer, but now that the drawers are pretty full, they’re not going anywhere ;-)

After I wind the ribbon—I only put about 3 yards of heavy/wide ribbon on each bobbin, but I can get up to 10 yards of thin and narrow on a bobbin. After I wind it, I just secure it with one of these little black rubber bands, which I find in the hair accessories aisle at Wal*Mart, quite inexpensively. Now, this project will take some time to get set up, but I found lots of time to do it while watching TV, riding in the car--I’ve even taken it to meetings and worked on it there :)

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One caveat: most ribbon will develop creases from being on the bobbin. To take care of that problem, I keep a small flat iron handy beside my craft table chair. Once I decide what ribbon I’m going to use, I turn the flat iron on, measure what I need, and cut it off the bobbin. By that time the flat iron has heated up and I just pull the ribbon through to smooth out the creases. Takes another minute but well worth it for the ability to find what I want quickly.

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My favorite ribbon for card making is any that is soft and not too bulky. Seam binding definitely falls within that category so I use it a good bit. Here’s where I store my rolls of seam binding. I keep a roll of low-tack painter’s tape handy to keep the ends taped down—otherwise that tote would be a hot mess! I’m thinking I need some more colors, though, don’t you? Definitely need to place an order soon :)

One tip about seam binding: I used to dye/distress a bunch of it ahead of time with Distress Inks. It takes quite a bit of time for it to dry if you want it wrinkled, and have some I did up that I’ve never used. Now I buy the colored seam binding and distress it as I need it. How? I use a Copic refill (E33 is my favorite) to distress what I need for a card/project. After I drop on some E33, I add some colorless refill to get it damp enough, then just scrunch it up in my hands until it’s wrinkled enough and dry. Since it’s alcohol based, it dries pretty quickly and I don’t have to have a lot of different colors made up, and I don’t have to find a place to store it. It’s a little stiffer than that done with Distress Inks, but the convenience more than compensates for that. After it’s dry, more scrunching will soften it a bit and this method ties as well as the other, IMO. Um, ignore the paper scraps on the floor, will ya? ;-)

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I’m also counting Baker’s twine in the ribbon category and it’s also all in a drawer—not neatly. This storage “system” is not earth shattering, LOL, but I thought I might as well share it. I started to arrange it all nice but I knew it wouldn’t stay that way so I thought: “Why bother—it’s all in one place, I can see it, and I can find it just fine” ;-)

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I also love regular twine and use it a LOT! I buy the large rolls and just leave it on the rolls. Silver is used more for Christmas projects.

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And, lastly, another favorite “ribbon” of mine is twill. I store it in a drawer on the rolls on which it comes. I have several sizes of natural, several of white (more sizes in another drawer--I can also color the white with Distress Ink pads by just drawing the pad over a length of twill), and one size of black.

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Thanks so much for stopping by to take my little tour of my ribbon storage system. I hope you’ve found a little something that will help you with your ribbon organization.

Hope to see you back tomorrow for the first teaser of March! This release is AWESOME (aren’t they ALL?) so you won’t want to miss a single thing :)