Ok, so I felt it was about time that I did another little storage post as I do have rather a lot of rolls of ribbon and a large amount of ribbon remnants and, as you have probably realised by now, I do buy the odd roll – rarely of course and it is not showing any signs of slowing down. After doing a rough count a good year or two ago it was 2-300 so by now it will easily be at least 4-450.
Now, I know when we look on luscious pinterest, we see ribbons stored in the most beautiful manner, on wall mounted reels and adorable little shelving units amongst other things. However, lets be realistic here;
- Firstly, if you create for a living like me, or even if you are a serious hobbyist, it really does not take long at all to build up a decent stash of ribbon rolls and pieces of ribbon – you don’t see the remnants displayed so beautifully do you?
- Secondly, in order to store a decent amount of ribbon, you would need to give up a fairly large amount of wall space and you would really want to keep all the ends pinned neatly, so they weren’t all swaying around in the breeze – well you would wouldn’t you!
- Thirdly, I don’t have any vertical wall space to speak of as my little “Narnia Studio’ has been created from a large cupboard with sloped ceilings on both sides, and at present, it has no window or natural light.
- Finally, even if I were fortunate enough to have wonderful wall space, I really don’t have the time, or indeed the inclination, to keep my ribbons that neat and tidy all the time – it would be chaos, I know it would – and I really wouldn’t want to give up that much wall space.
So, to that end, how do you store 450 rolls of ribbon and hundreds, if not thousands of ribbon pieces.
I have tried various different options over the years but to be honest what I have always gone back to, as it has always worked for me, is putting them all in drawers.
When I create, I tend to always work by colours so that is mostly how I store all the wonderful craft materials that I have collected over the years.
Firstly I will give all the same type of product a ‘department’ (I know, Mr Chandelier finds all my ‘departments’ highly amusing too!) Then, I will sub-divide into colours if there are big enough quantities. So, with the ribbons, I sub-divided into colours and I have a drawer for each colour, or group of colours i.e; Reds & Pinks each have their own drawer as they are massive for me, Taupes, Creams & Whites share but they really do desperately need their own drawer now, and the Blues, Greys and Purples share which is just about ok.
Ribbon storage – This drawer is sooo not going to close!
This all worked fine for years, but it did get to a point of no return a few months ago at Christmas, when each drawer slowly became more and more difficult to close due to the new rolls I had purchased. When they practically ‘exploded’ like this one upon opening, I knew that a ‘Ribbon crisis point’ had been reached! I really had to think about this as I totally did not have any more drawers and I just needed approximately one more row per colour. I also was having real trouble and ‘annoyance’ getting to my velvet ribbons which I use all the time. Most of them are large tall reels which I had to sit at the back of the drawers as they were so tall, hence the hassle when I needed them.
After yet another ‘Velvet tantrum’ it suddenly struck me! How about creating an incredibly luscious ‘Velvets Department’ – this was the perfect answer, as not only would that generate another row per drawer for the other ribbons, but I would be able to get to them easily in their own drawer, and as I use them so often, I felt they had totally ‘earnt’ their own space! However, this did unfortunately mean I had to sacrifice a drawer which had some other materials and supplies in it, which still don’t have a home, but we will just ‘brush on over that’ and focus on our luscious velvets!
Just look at these – they’re almost edible.
You so know how I feel about velvet ribbons so imagine opening a drawer full of them in loads of different colours…….Omg……..Ribbon Heaven……..Love Love Love it!
Now, how do you deal with all the remnants. Again, it doesn’t take long when as I do, you use ribbons all the time, so I had to deal with these remnants many years ago. If you don’t have that many, they do look really pretty stored into glass jars – ‘not that many’ however, does not seem to be in my vocabulary (Mr Chandelier would so agree with that!)
The most space saving, easy to find, easy to view solution was to store them rolled into small self closing, clear bags within their own colours. They can then sit on top of the rolls of ribbon and when you want a certain colour you can pick them up really easily and see both what scraps you have and what the rolls of ribbon are underneath. It also works really well when I have a workshop, as I can just take down a few bags of remnants with some rolls and it gives everyone loads of different choices.
To roll the ribbon pieces up, trap the end between your two fingers and then wrap the rest around all your fingers, until it is all nicely rolled into a neat circle.
Obviously, in an Ideal world, (if such a world were to exist) I would have a drawer for just the remnants of each colour but frankly that is just a fantasy world – let’s aim for a window first!!!
So here they are, all looking rather lush, screaming at me to touch them and use them and snip a bit off to enhance whatever project it is I am working on. Incidentally, just between you and me, I don’t know why I make out I am working on ‘a project’ like a normal person when the reality is ‘a lot of half finished projects’, some dating back many years – ok ok, maybe just one or two are at least 10+ years old…….Nooooo! We will just pretend I am normal shall we?……Hmmm…….
How do you store your ribbons – I would love to know – do you break down into colours and what about your remnants?
Go and have a ‘Happy Sorting Day’.
Much Love,
Sarah xx
Chandeliers and Roses 