Remember the time that you had that really cute patterned paper you bought for one project and later wanted to punch out just a 1″ circle from it?  I used to run into that A LOT!  I don’t like punching out small shapes from a gigantic 12 x2 sheet.  

I organize all of my scraps into two expanding files.  I’ve seen this method before.  But what I love about mine, is that it has two sizes in each expanding file.  There are 12 tabs with a total of 14 slots.  Half of the slots can fit up to  8.5″ x 11″ and the other slots can hold up to 4.5″ x 11″.  I purchased these expanding files several years ago from Target and they were the Up and Up brand.  I think the cost of each one was about $5.  

I used to live in a small 2 bedroom apartment.  The spare room was shared with my husband as the office/guest room/hobby room. In the past year, we moved into a small house with 3 bedrooms.  Now I’m lucky enough to have my very own office/craft room! 

In the apartment, I didn’t have much space to store my materials.  I had half of a closet and a few shelves.  I created a compact and flexible way to organize all of my ribbon.  

Since I have my very own room to craft in, my inventory of supplies and materials have increased.  I took the same concept that I started with and expanded it to my growing collection of ribbon.  

In the initial concept, I had standard 1/4″ dowels cut in half and spray painted white. In the new design, I started with whole 1/4″ dowels. But as I kept adding rolls of ribbon, the center started to sag.  So I upgraded to 1/2″ dowels.  Some spools weren’t large enough to fit, so I cut slits into the center hole.  This also kept the spool from unwinding so quickly. 

MATERIALS:

4   1/2″ wooden dowels

2  yards chain