Decorated Ribbon by Robin Seiz

Hi Friends,

Summer is certainly here! Our temperatures here in Pennsylvania are in the high 80’s and 90’s right now! I work in my garden in the morning and I’m happy to get out of the heat in the middle of the day and come inside to create.

Because I am an avid gardener, I selected a project which represents this time of year. What better artfoamies to use than a moth and beautiful leaves! The completed project is a spool of one long strip of decorated ribbon. I can use this and cut it up for journal embellishments, card embellishments, or perhaps decorate a gift with some of it.

I bought several of these wooden spools several years ago, thinking “someday” I would find a use for them — and this project is it!

Because my studio is packed up right now, I have limited supplies and I’m trying to use scraps and papers I have used to clean off my brayer.

I ripped these into pieces approximately 2 1/2” wide. The lengths were varied depending on the paper.

Since the plan was to sew them together to make one long strip, I arranged them so they would be complimentary and pleasing to the eye. I then sewed them together two pieces at a time. I used my embroidery stitches, which in retrospect, worked ok, but not perfectly, because I didn’t use a backing. I really didn’t mind, it added to the organic nature of this project.

Once they were all sewn together, I started stamping. I decided to use black so the ink wouldn’t compete with the background colors.

My original intent was just to leave the stamps the way they were, letting the color shine through the stamp. But I felt they needed more. I started embellishing them with a white Uniball gel pen and I loved the difference. It made each and everyone of them pop off the page.

Here is a short video of the entire completed paper ribbon.

Once complete, I used washi tape to adhere the end to the spool. I wrapped the paper ribbon around the spool and neatly tied it with Sari ribbon.

 

Even if I never use the paper ribbon, this will make a lovely decoration in the new studio. I could even unwind it a little to show off the ribbon.

This is an easy project. Even if you don’t have the wooden spool like the one I used, get creative and use something else that you have around the house. I think a small ball jar would work really well. It could also act as a holder for brushes or pens.

If you want to see other things that I have created (or my garden) follow me on

https://www.facebook.com/robin.e.seiz
https://www.instagram.com/robinseiz