Tutorial - Quick and Easy Recycled-Yoghurt-Pot Ribbon Organizer

This little cutie had been sitting on my "to-do" list for the longest time...

Really I should be ashamed because it is so quick and easy, I don't have any excuses to not have made it any earlier.

I had a bunch of narrow craft ribbons lying around in an untidy heap in my drawer...

... And I really needed to take care of it. So I ended up making this handy dandy ribbon organiser. You only need a handful of things for this project and it shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes (10 minutes for the crafty ones) to finish it up!

Here are the main things you'll need:

• An empty plastic yoghurt container (or custard/cream pot) with original lid
• Gift wrapping paper
• PVA glue (or that thing they call mod-podge)
• A retractable cutter
• An untidy pile of ribbons just itching to be sorted!

Right, let's get going.

First things first, I washed out and dried the yoghurt pot and lid ...

Next, I cut up a piece of cute gift-wrap (I liked this silly one with all the faces on it) and pasted it onto the pot using PVA glue. Set it to one side to dry while you carry on ...

I took the lid and placed it top-down on a blank piece of paper. I traced the outline in pencil...

Now for that pile of ribbons ...

They were all the same width; I measured one and it was about 10 mm wide, see?

This gave me an idea of the size of slots I needed for my ribbons. Back to that circle outlined on the paper, I drew a series of roughly 10 mm long lines inside the circle. I did this in a concentric fashion; you could draw them wherever you want inside the circle ...

Next, I took the yoghurt pot lid and placed it bottom-up on the circular design. Holding it firmly in place, I made slits on the lid along the pencil lines using a retractable cutter. (Make sure the slits are fairly straight and around 1mm longer than the actual ribbon width...)

Right, time to take care of those ribbons. I bundled up each ribbon and placed it inside the pot...

Next, using a small blunt object (I used the plastic end of a tic-tac pencil) I pushed one each of each ribbon through a slot in the lid...

And I pulled it through on top. Do this with all the ribbons...

Once all the ribbons are pushed through, place the lid back on the pot.

Ta-daaaaa !! You have a bunch of happy ribbons living together in their cute little organizer. Every time I need a ribbon, I can look at the exact shade I need. I can also see when a colour is running out through the transparent lid when I start pulling it through ...so now I can top them up easily.

This organizer is so quick, easy and cheap, you could make one for each specific bundle width of ribbons e.g. a pot for 6mm ribbons, 10mm, 20mm and so on ...

You could also have pots according to families of colours and arrange them in your collection. Do let me know how your projects turn out; happy crafting! xxx