Now that I have shared ways to use ribbon in your layouts and you are ready to start adding ribbon to your pages, you are going to want a system for organizing your ribbon.
I used to store all of my ribbon in one drawer in my craft room. Whenever I would collect a new spool of ribbon, it would be tossed into the drawer. Guess what? I newer used any ribbon on my layouts. I really didn’t even know what I had or I couldn’t find what I needed. I explored many options for organizing ribbon and eventually came up with a system that works for me. I’d like to share the information that I collected on various ways for organizing ribbon. Hopefully you will be able to find a system that works for you.
1. Keep ribbon on spool and hang from a closet rod or a pants hanger with multiple rods.
2. Remove the ribbon from the spool and drape over a hanger. You could designate a different hanger for each color family of ribbon (reds hanger, blues hanger, greens hanger, etc.)
3. Keep ribbon on the spool and stack similar colors of ribbon in jars. This can also serve as a great decorative accent in your craft area. The drawback is that if you want ribbon from the spool in the bottom of the jar, you have to remove all of the other spools to get to it.
4. Organize in an embellishment organizer. Crystal (the other families.com scrapbooking blogger) introduced me to the ribbon organization system that currently works for me: a Cropper Hopper embellishment organizer with fiber cards. The organizer is divided into 30 compartments. The fiber cards can be purchased separately from Cropper Hopper and they are used to wrap one piece of ribbon around each one. The card fit perfectly into each compartment. It initially took a couple of hours to untangle and organize my ribbon, but now it is so easy to keep organized. I have sorted it by color.
Now that I have found a ribbon organization system, I use ribbon on almost every layout. It is easy to find a ribbon that will go well with my page. I can pull out a few of the fibers cards at a time and set them right on my page to see if they match. Organization is the key to making scrapbooking more enjoyable. Good luck with your organizing!