Quick project

I'm in the middle of my pregnancy right now, and I'm finding I finally have some energy.  It's like all the projects that have been building up in my mind, I now want to get done.  Right now.  Because I know that the next few months are going to be tired ones, and then with a new baby, free time is hard to come by. 

Thanks to my new addiction to Pinterest, I found this great idea for organizing ribbon. The tutorial is actually for a wrapping paper station, but I knew it would be perfect for my collection of ribbon, and it would look great hanging in my craft room.

The first thing  I needed was an open back frame.  While we were out shopping on Saturday, I stopped by Michaels to see what they cost.  They didn't have any big enough, but they were expensive!  Our next stop for the day was Lowes, so I decided I would pick ups some moulding and make my own frame. I spent a total of $6 on the molding to create a 2 ft. X 3ft frame. This proved a little more difficult than I intiatially expected, as the wood was too thin to Kreg Jig together. And, due to some errors in my miter cuts initially, the frame ended up being a bit shorter than I wanted.  Live and learn.  We ended up using glue and staples to connect the corners.  The rest was pretty straight forward.  I just needed a little more depth from the wall to give my ribbons enough room to spin freely, so I attached some 2X2's to the vertical sides of the back of the frame.  I then used this to hang the frame, so there wouldn't be any weight on the joint of the frame (which is pretty much held together by glue.  I was able to fit almost all my ribbon on 2 rows, and had some space left over for wrapping paper. 

I've added a bit more ribbon since I took this pic, so it's starting to get a little crowded.  We'll see how long the wrapping paper lasts on there until it's totally consumed with just ribbon!

Several of my ribbons were not neatly wound - I got them at a ribbon outlet, and some of them were just stuffed in ziplock bags.  I had a big cardboard bolt from fabric I had purchased, and cut this to the widths of several of my ribbons that needed to be wound up.  Then the kids helped me get it all wound, so they could go on my new organizer. 

What better way to spend a day off from school, than helping your mom organize her ribbon. Right?  The kids actually really enjoyed winding up the ribbon, and each did 5 or six spools!

I was glad the kids were such willing helpers.  As you can see, we had a lot of ribbon to wind up!

It's really great to be able to see all the ribbon I have. Mayne now I'll finally get around to making some cute hair bows for Olivia, as I originally intended when I bought all that ribbon. I do plan on painting my cafe rods, so they aren't brass (or rubbed bronze...), but that will have to wait until another day.