the hybrid chick

A few months ago, I was cruising around my favorite blogs and came upon a post about recycling empty ribbon spools. I have a bunch of empty ribbon spools hanging around, so naturally I was intrigued! The projects were pretty, but they didn’t come with any instructions. So, I decided to play . . . experiment, really . . . and take pictures along the way to show you how I created this cute little box from an empty ribbon spool. Hold on, though, because it’s a bit bumpy!

As soon as I saw Kelley Mickus’ beautiful new Whisper kit at The Digichick, I knew that I wanted to print those beautiful papers out and hold them in my hands. I could have simply and easily printed out each paper one by one (without even opening up Photoshop), but I don’t like to waste paper and ink, so I was deliberate about measuring and creating a single sheet that I could print out.

First, I measured the diameter (length across the middle) of the ribbon spool. My spool measured roughly 3.25 inches.

I went into Photoshop Elements and created a new, blank document with the following settings:

I selected the eliptical marquis tool (which toggles between looking like a rectangle or an oval):

and typed in a Fixed size of 3.25 x 3.25in. (click to enlarge)

I clicked down on my blank canvas, and a circle created by little marching ants appeared. I created a new layer for my circle in the layers palette, and then typed “K” to select the paint bucket tool. With my new layer selected, I clicked down in the circle to fill it with color. I hit control/command D to deselect.

Then, I opened up some gorgeous, soft paper from Kelley’s kit and I “clipped” the paper to the circular “mask” I just created. To do this, I dragged the paper onto my document, positioned it just above my filled circle, and held down the alt/option key while hovering my mouse between the two layers in the layers palette until it turned into a double circle. Then, I clicked down on the line between the two layers. This created a clipping mask! (For a little more about “clipping masks” see this post.)

I duplicated these efforts a few times, since I wanted to make sure I had lots of options for my creativity! This was my page after I printed it on matte photo paper.

Oooh! Now it was time to get messy! This is what I did:

1 – Carefully peal off one side of the ribbon spool to expose the inside. Save that piece for the lid of the box.

2 – Tear off any extra pieces of paper that stayed behind, and sand the edge to make it nice and smooth.

3 – Paint the ribbon spool with acrylic paint. I eventually painted the entire thing, inside and out. I wasn’t terribly neat about it, but I did apply a couple of coats.

4 – While the paint is drying, cut out the circles that you printed out. I really wish that I had a circle cutter that would cut 3.25 in circles. (sigh) However, neither of my two wonderful circle cutting systems had a 3.25 guide, so I was left to cut by hand. I got a little crazy with inking the edges of my circles with a sponge, but I think it worked out!

5 – (Now, you’ll notice that I switched up my “example” spool. I was just playin’!) This is the part that I totally experimented on. I had NO idea how to close up my little box and was thinking on this dilemma for a couple of days. Finally, in a stroke of brilliance, I decided that I could close it with some ribbon! (Sad that it took me a couple of days to figure that out, huh?) To do this, I applied two-sided tape (Tombow Mono Adhesive) to the ribbon of choice, and attached it to the outside of the ribbon spool as pictured.

6 – Then, I applied some liquid glue (Beacon Zip Dry) to the spool and wrapped a strip of paper around the whole thing.

7 – Next, I pulled the ribbon tight across the top of the spool and glued a smaller circle to the underside of the ribbon (thank goodness for pictures, right?).

8 – I placed my decorated lid (remember that piece you saved?) on top of the small circle I just glued to the ribbon, and attached the two with liquid glue.

9 – I attached another piece of ribbon to the bottom of the ribbon spool box, and covered it with paper.

Here is my finished ribbon spool box! I can picture this filled with little candies or bath salts. I can also see it filled with a little circular mini album (accordion style would be so cool!). Wouldn’t it be a great place to store paper flowers or little embellishments – perhaps even ribbon scraps?

Let your imagination run wild as you create your own recycled ribbon spool project!

Other Articles by kelleighr:

• A Cupcake Shaped Box Challenge! - August 1st, 2011
• Love Is in the Air Mailbox - February 5th, 2010
• The Mini Bloom Box Tutorial - December 11th, 2009
• The Perfect Paper Apple! - October 10th, 2009
• Winners Announced!! - May 4th, 2009