Ramblings of a Ribbon-Aholic

This is the true story of one scrapper, in love with stunning ribbons, stuck in a slump of a storage nightmare as her growing affection outgrows her once-smart solutions…

The first step is admitting you have a problem. Hello, My name is Sara and I am addicted to ribbon. Done. Step two was actually the beginning of this whole saga. I rejoined the world of scrapbooking after a few years off. I hadn’t really ever used ribbon before… so when I discovered cafemom scrapbooking, ribbon, eBay and I was feeding a 5 month old baby 3-4 jars of food a day – the combination seemed perfect. I had thought baby jars were such a great idea to organize my ribbons by color! And it was perfect when all I had was an eBay order of solid and polka dot grosgrain ribbon cut by 3 yd increments and no spool. It was so pretty and colorful, inspiring and wonderful a top my desk hutch.

However, my growing addiction soon landed in chaos. Almost immediately after I found myself drawn to $1 spools at my LSS and other craft stores. I would open these spools and shove ribbon in jars. Scrapbooking later was turning into a nightmare, and my pretty jar decorations seemed like every other sacrifice for beauty. Painful.

A shopping trip to Family dollar seemed to finally answer my prayers when I found a cheap and adorable piece of furniture that I thought would solve all my woes. And it did. For many months. Ribbon left on the spool would occupy one drawer. Snipits and odds and ends, much like a kitchen junk drawer, occupied another. Giving it a home, flanking my right side, I thought I had reached Nirvana.

But how many times did I pull a drawer out, search for ribbon and while hunting stumble upon an adorable print that would have been oh-so-perfect for the layout I had agonized over days ago. I knew I wasn’t crazy, that I had an aqua butterfly print ribbon, about ½” wide. Dang. Okay… doubts started creeping into my mind.

It would all change one innocent Friday night. Getting together with my two best friends, across my neighborhood, after kids are tucked in, we scrap. We scrap, we laugh, Crystal usually makes cookies or brownies…. It’s not always super productive for me; however, some nights at home I only accomplish one layout because of distractions. So getting a few pages done and having fits of giggles throughout is always a successful night in my book! It was one of these boisterous evenings that I had, in my haste to be at Crystal's, just thrown the “junk” ribbon drawer into my large re-usable CookieLee shop-bag (which, by this point, the drawer had more ribbon in it than a clearance bin at Wal-Mart). While scrapping I exposed this chaotic mass of ribbon to the girls and they were understandably concerned. I was forced to admit that I, Sara, did indeed need a new storage idea for ribbon. It was the first time I had said it aloud.

It was shortly after, I had a vision while restructuring the kitchen. This came from a common kitchen mystery… the one where your rubbermates and leftover containers disappear, somehow into thin air. Sound familiar? Anyhow, once the glory it’s cabinet was my oriental trading revolving storage container carousel thing… I have no pictures of this, but for a month it was a failing misery of a great idea. I tied ribbon around the arms of the 4 “chambers” and stacked the spools inside. Trying to clean up my abominable “junk” ribbon drawer, I used a circle punch to notch out cardboard squares. I wound up the longer odds and ends, trying to do it by color or theme. And the center of my carousel housed many of these boards. It contained a lot of ribbon, however the containing was not flawless and trying to see what was all in there was near impossible. I really needed an intervention…

Danielle had heard my plea, and for my birthday a few weeks later, 2 brand new Craftmates Ribbon storage containers were mine! Danielle, my friend since 5th grade, (and rediscovered after we became mommies) had answered the mystery all along. (For now {knocking on wood}).

I have since purchased 2 more, filled it up… and I still have stacked spools, a drawer or two of loose ends, boards of ribbons, and plenty of jars with grosgrain galore. And while my scrapbook room is really a corner of my bedroom {GROAN} I hope it to be in an office soon… and when it does, who knows what the future holds.


I guess stay tuned to the Saga of the Girl who Loves Ribbon! And please, tell me what storage solutions you have, be they inventive or retailed, that you feel suite you. Or do you have a dilemma or debacle such as I have had?? Please share your story, if you revel in ribbon!