Shoe Box Ribbon Dispenser

For a while now, I’ve been thinking that I need to do something to organize my ribbons and even started to think or some ways to do it. Here’s one that I came up with, out of a shoebox.
The main objective was to create a way to organize and dispense multiple ribbons, while spending the least amount of money. I decided to go with a removeable rod system in a shoebox. It seems to work pretty well and I managed to set it up for under a dollar. Here’s what I did...

First, the parts:

• 1 shoebox (cost: free)
• 1 dowel 5/16" (cost: ~ 80 cents)
• 1 paint stirrer - 5 gallon (cost: free, I just asked the paint person at OSH)
  

Now the work:

1. Cut the dowel to the length of the shoebox.

2. Cut the paint stirrer to have 2 pieces the depth of the shoebox. (doesn’t have to be as deep as shoe box, but I’d go at least about 3 inches.)

3. Drill the hole on the paint stirrer for the dowel. (I used the ribbon as a guide, making sure to give room so the ribbon doesn’t hit the bottom of the box. Also, make sure to check that the dowel fits easily in.)

4. Glue your paint stirrers to the sides of your box. You may want to assemble the whole thing with a ribbon on the dowel so you can gauge where you want to glue the paint stirrers. I placed the assembly so that the ribbon would be about 1/4" away from one edge (long side) of the box. You might not want to have the dowel in when you’re gluing the two sides because if you put too much glue, you can possibly glue your dowel in.

5. Once your glue is dry, go ahead and test out the dowel. Put it in, and take it out. If you have trouble you might need to trim the edge of the dowel just a bit.

6. Put the ribbons on the dowel, and insert the dowel into position.
7. On the long edge of the box (next to the ribbons), I created slits using a box cutter to serve as a holder for the ribbon ends. For bigger ribbons, these slits might not work too well.

That’s pretty much it. If you have room on the other side of the box, you can create an area to store ribbons that maybe aren’t open yet, and do not need to be on the dowel yet. For this, I make two slit holes on the short sides of the box placed at a division point of the ribbon area and where the storage area will be. I put mine about 2 inches from the floor of the shoe box. Thread a piece of ribbon thru both holes and knot, on both sides. Make the knot close to the side of the box to add a bit of tension, but not too much.

That’s it. Just load it up, put the ends of all the ribbons in the slits, and place the cover. You can also decorate the shoe box however way you’d like to make it more decorative.