Thursday, October 23, 2014

Organization for Your Craft Space - Buttons and Ribbon

It's time for one of my favourite posts of the month! Like may stampers I like to organize almost as much as I like to stamp. Each month the MFT Design Team will share their organization techniques for some of their most used stamping supplies. This month, the team is tackling buttons and ribbon.

MFT has a beautiful collection of colourful buttons, and of course I had to have each and every colour available. :) I store my buttons in the Ikea RAJTAN Spice Jars,. There are a couple of reasons that I love these jars, they are the perfect size for a bag of MFT buttons and they are quite inexpensive. I also love the way the jars look when they are all lined up.

I currently have my buttons lined up on my cutting table. My button collection tends to move around a bit because I don't have a permeant home for it yet that I am truly happy with. The jars all fit perfectly on the top of one of my bookcases, but they were so high up that it was hard to see all the gorgeous colours. I don't love having them on my table, so I am sure they will be on the move again soon. :)


I have a few extra bags of buttons that are patiently awaiting new jars. We don't have an Ikea on the island and Ikea doesn't ship the spice jars. Having buttons sitting in bags instead of in the pretty jars drives my OCD mind crazy! LOL The next time I get off the island I am heading straight for an Ikea!

If you saw the post I did a few years ago about my ribbon storage you will know that I have drastically reduced the amount of ribbon that I own. Over the years I had collected all sorts of patterned ribbons that I really never use, so I packed them and a bunch of the other styles that I don't usually use and gave them to a friend. Since I have cleared out all of that extra ribbon it is easier for me to find what I am looking for.

I apologize for all the funky shadows, it was raining heavily when I took the photos and I had to use a flash, which led to all sorts of weird reflections from the glass.

My ribbon currently sits on a small Ikea EXPEDIT/KALLAX unit. I used to have them all together on the top of a longer Expedit shelf, but I have since moved them into the cubby holes. I find the dust is easier to hide if they are in the cubbies. :) 

The ribbon is all stored on wide popsicle sticks in glass jars. You would not believe how much ribbon you can store on one stick! This picture shows the inside of my jar that stores all my MFT Grosgrain Ribbon. Each popsicle stick has between five and ten yards on it. I picked up all of the jars at the dollar store or the grocery store.

This first set of three jars store my Seam Binding, MFT Grosgrain, and Twine.

These jars store my polka dot ribbon, lace and crochet trims, and hemp cord.

Most of the jars store a single colour of ribbon. This set stores blue, orange, white/ivory, and pinks/reds.

Here we have striped ribbon, gingham, browns, greys/blacks.

This final set includes my scrap jar where I store little pieces of random ribbon, the large jar holds all my wide ribbon. The final two jars hold my green ribbon and floss.

The one drawback to storing ribbon this way is that I often have to iron the ribbon before I use it. It doesn't bother me, but I thought I would mention it in case you were thinking it might be a good storage solution for you.

Be sure to check out the MFT Blog to see how the rest of our fabulous team stores their buttons and ribbons.

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5 comments:

  1. I love being able to see all of the buttons and ribbons, beautiful!

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  2. I feel the need to go shopping for cool jars... love to SEE the things I have, too!

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  3. That's a serious button collection! Jealous!

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  4. Gorgeous! Thanks for sharing with us.
    God's blessings on your weekend!
    Sarah :)

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  5. Love how you use the sticks for your ribbon.

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