Creative Organization

Organization, it’s probably the most important attribute for a scrapbooker, card maker or general crafter should have. For the most part I think I am pretty organized…..until I can’t find what I am looking for and toss everything around. Oops. So my resolution this year is to figure out better ways to organize. Since I have little space to set up my ultimate crafting area, I have been thinking of creative ways to put things away.

an idea is born

Sitting here eating some very delicious pretzel rods I kept staring at the package the sticks came in. I wondered what I could possibly use this for. I looked over at my stack of boxes which I loved but found to be completely useless in the displaying of my ribbons. I am a visual person; I need to see things to remember to use them so though the boxes can hold a lot there isn’t a neat way to show me what’s available. So I pondered what I could do and it finally came to me, the container could hold my ribbons! Now I just had to figure out how to make this a useful idea…

nothing to see here

So I started by cleaning and removing the label from the container. Now I won’t lie this wasn’t easy. I heated up the label got impatient for the sticker to come off and almost melted the thing! I also scrubbed it in warm water, big mistake, which I will never do again. So I went back to the drawing board. I remembered reading about ways to get glue off of things and I vaguely recalled baby oil as am option. Being the eternal optimist I ran to my bathroom in search of some and much to my horror I realized I didn’t have any! Not to fear I am pretty astute when it comes to problem solving so I just went to my pantry and pulled out the vegetable oil, it worked like a charm and I was able to get it all clean.



Once I had dried the entire thing I took out my exacto knife and I planned on cutting a straight edge along the seam. I should mention I am not a great cutter because I don’t have a steady hand. Even with my less than stellar cutting I achieved pretty decent results.



I was worried that the butchered exposed plastic might harm my ribbon so I decided to cover it. I took clear packing tape and cut it the length of the opening. I folded over the edge so it protects both inside and out. The plastic is pretty malleable so it wasn’t a problem to bend it to get the tape inside .I repeated this for the other side.

I then finally was able to put in some of my ribbon into it and I tested out how it works. For the large size it is great and works like a dream. For the smaller ribbons they require more stability. I solved that by attaching a dowel piece on the center of the lid to hold the ribbons in place.

Hope you enjoyed my idea. Happy crafting!

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