Ribbon Organizer Tutorial

I made a few ribbon spool holders a few years ago...they didn't quite hold all my spools, but they were a help!  The pink one in the back is the new one I am going to show you how to make.
I have made ribbon organizers before, but they were too small or too wonky to work well. 

This is my pre organizer ribbon storage…yeah, not working so much!  The more I dug to find a color, the more I couldn’t find it!

And this is the after!  Six dowels all full of ribbon…

So, a few weekends ago I acquired about 50 more rolls of ribbon (major deal~~$5 for 50 rolls, plus some lace and rick rack, plus I donated a large quantity of trims and things I won’t use to Goodwill) and clearly needed more efficient storage. 

Since there are different sized rolls, I decided to make one to fit the larger ribbon rolls.

I found a board that was 4.25 inches wide and I cut it to 18.5 inches long.  I laid my large ribbon roll along the board and used a black marker to mark the hole in the center of the ribbon spool.

I just kept repeating until I was to the end of the board.  If you want actual measurements, the holes were 4.5 inches apart and the first and last holes were 2.5 inches from the end of the board.

Then I used a yardstick to tidy the spacing up a bit so the dots were equal distance from the sides and from each other. As I walk to the garage I remember that I haven’t fed my fish yet today…so I stop and do that…

One of these days the big goldfish is going to jump right out of there!

Ok, back to the project!  I got my Craftsman drill ready and used the appropriate sized drill bit which happened to be 3/8 inch.  Now here is the tricky part…this is how I got my holes to be straight so the dowels don’t lean crazy.  I put a ribbon spool on the board and held it while I drilled. 

Ok, now I know there is probably a tool to accomplish this in a less silly fashion, but I use what I have!  I make do!  My mom taught me that…she has eight kids and she could whip up a big meal out of not much or make us all clothes out of what she could get.  So that is my mom’s trait that I am happy to have—she is much better at it though!

Looking pretty straight now, huh?  So next, sand it all nice and purty!  I have an electric sander and couldn’t quite find the coordination to sand with two hands and take a pic, so no pics of that part! 

Now give it a nice coat of spray paint (or you wouldn’t have to do this step, it works fine either way!).  And yes, that is my trash can lid that I spray painted on.  I always use it for all my spray painting—that’s just how I roll around here!  Let the paint dry all the way (trust me on this one—it is hard to peel a ribbon roll off the board when you didn’t let the paint dry all the way) and….

I  used a small rubber mallet to pound the dowels into the drilled holes.  (The dowels are 12 inches tall, did I mention that?)  You could put a drop of wood glue or Gorilla glue on dowel before you hit it into the hole.

Drum roll please!!!!  All done…..

Total cost to make…nothing!  I had the dowels, paint, sandpaper, boards left over from another project. 

Now, I hate to admit it, but I have more spools of ribbon in my craft room that need to be stored onto my new holder too!  Can a person have too much ribbon?
I had linked this project up to Jill's great blog Creating My Way to Success last week, but thought I would share it here too!

Ellen