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Storing ribbons has always been a challenge for me. It seems like to matter what I do, spools seems to unravel and create a giant mess. Hopefully, I’m not the only one with this problem, right? Well, I may have found the answer to our problem, and it involves the pink thing below…

More on the pink thing in a minute. For a little background, my ribbon storage has gone through several iterations each getting a bit more organized. First, they were jumbled in a big box. Then I hung them on a pants hanger. The hanger actually worked pretty well, but I didn’t have a place to hang it near where I was actually doing my wrapping. This resulted in the hanger being moved around a lot and with each movement the ribbon would jiggle off the rolls a little bit (again, a big jumbled mess).

Flash forward to today, and I’m trying a new ribbon storage set-up, which I think is the most promising yet! Several months ago a friend and I made a trip to the Alameda Antique Faire in the Bay Area. It’s held on the old runway of the Alameda Navy Base, and it’s AMAZING! First off, it’s huge (it is a runway after all!). Secondly, there’s always a ton a great stuff. If you live in the area I highly recommend it!

At the antique faire, I picked up something that I just had to have. Tucked back behind several other items was this pink shiny metal thing. Upon closer inspection, turns out it was a vintage wrap dispenser. Did I need a wrap dispenser? No. Did I have a place for it in my newly remodeled kitchen? No way. Did the pink color go with anything else in my house? Definitely not. But in that moment, I could care less. It was so cool, and so I bought and challenged myself to find a use for it.

A metal pink wrap dispenser. Isn’t it neat?

The metal is a bit dinged up, but the labels are in near perfect shape.

Ove the past several months it’s been haunting me. Do I store something in it? Do I make it into a lamp? Do I give it to someone else? Hmmm. And then, when I was getting wrapping supplies ready for Christmas it hit me. Ribbon storage!

Putting it together was pretty easy. The Dispenser is larger on the bottom, so I decided the smaller spools would go into the “Aluminum Foil” and “Wax Paper” slots, and would save the larger “Paper Towels” spot for the two larger spools of ribbon.

For the smaller ribbons, I just slid the ribbon spools over an empty paper towel roll and inserted the paper towel roll into the holder.

The bigger ribbon rolls were a little more complicated. Because they were so large, they wouldn’t fit over a paper towel roll. Instead I used some leftover picture wire. I ran the picture wire through the ribbon spools and then wrapped them around the holder mounts.

They look funny sitting crooked, but after placing the cover back on you can’t even tell.

My very cool-looking ribbon dispenser will get it’s first trial starting this weekend, and I begin to wrap presents. Hopefully there’ll be no more tangly mess!

Below is what the ribbon dispenser looks like in my craft room. I typically wrap presents on  the table that my sewing machine is currently sitting on. I think the location will be just perfect for wrapping efficiency. I can’t show you more of the room because it’s in full-on Christmas crafting disaster mode!

How do you store ribbon and other wrapping supplies?