Making Ribbons

Hi there, everyone!

What a weekend.  Yeah?  One thing you know, it's Friday and the next thing you know, it's time to lay out your clothes for work and watch THE WALKING DEAD on TV...

Speaking of work, I'm not gonna be in the mood to get up and go tomorrow.  Why?  Because of the stupidity that is the time change.  I hate Daylight Savings Time time.  My internal clock is screwed up.   I'm gonna be crazy and mean at 8AM tomorrow.  I promise you.

But now- it's time to talk about making ribbon!

Why make ribbon?  And is this really ribbon?  I call it ribbon, so there- it's ribbon.  I've used this on lots of projects.  It adds a great touch, and you can adapt it to make any kind of ribbon 'look.'

First, cut a strip of plain, unbleached muslin.  This stuff is cheap.  And versatile.  And looks good.

One of my favorite things to do, when 'makin ribbon,' is to stamp the muslin. My favorite stamps to use when doing this are Distressing Stamps from Glitz.

Here is the stamped muslin.  Looks cool, doesn't it?  The muslin takes the ink very well.  It looks like the fabric 'came that way!'

Let's look at that close up!

I also like to color the strips with some Distress Stain, then cut it into smaller strips.  Here, I've used some Weathered Wood and Vintage Photo Distress Stains.  I usually mist the fabric with water before applying the stains- it seems to both help the fabric take the stain and gives it more of a worn/streaky look.  Which I like.

I really liked how the strip from the 'numbers' stamp turned out.

I decided to make a few strips without any stamping.  Misted with water, put on some stain.

Wrinkled it up into a ball and dried it with my heat gun.

And SURPRISE!

Cool lookin strip of fabric!

Which I cut into smaller strips and tied to a mini-book that I've been working on for months.  Yeah.  Months.  I keep doing a little bit at a time.

I like how they look on the side of this book, but not sure what else I'll do to them or tie to them or..

So, make some ribbon!

I'm going to relax for a little bit and then try to go to sleep as early as I can, so that I don't feel like too much nasty when I try to drag myself to work.  I think it'll be a Benadryl night.

Oh yeah!  Remember my little contest?  Well, besides from makin' ribbons, I also used one of your ideas and made something with my cool little stamp!  I'll show it to you tomorrow!

-kory