I wanted to follow-up with the experiment I was doing with the 1/8″ chiffon ribbon I got on sale at HL the other day.  Check out the post below this one for more information on that thought.

Years ago (and I mean years ago), I was into oil and acrylic painting.  This was back when the decorating theme of choice was “Country”.  One of the projects I did was a painted  wood piece that looked like little girls in pinafores holding hands. It had pegs in it to hold things like a necklace, ribbons or belts.  The little girls heads were round and you used yarn to make their hair.  The technique to make their hair worked so well for their ringlets, I thought I would test it out on this ribbon to see if it would work.  By the way, I liked this piece so much, I still have it.  Some of the pegs are missing but those ringlets are still holding firm in their little pigtales.

You can use bamboo skewers or a pencil or anything that is a cynlinder shape.  When I orignally did this technique we used metal knitting needles.  The size of the object you are using will depend on how tight or loose the ribbon will curl.  You can also wrap the ribbon more than one time over itself.  If you do this, remember the ribbon on the bottom will be tighter than the ribbon on top.

I just wound the ribbon on the object and clamped it down with a binder clip to hold it in place.  I then placed it on a wire rack (or a cookie sheet will work too) and let it bake in the oven for 45 minutes on 250 degrees.  Now, if you are using a pencil you may want to remove the eraser (it may melt in the oven and who wants to clean up that mess).  You also do not want to stick this in the oven and then leave the house.  This is a low temperature but like everything you do with fire/electricity, you need to use common sense and stay around to be sure something doesn’t happen.  Once the 45 minutes is over, take them out of the oven and let them cool down.  This is an important step, the cool down is what makes the ribbon hold the curl and it also makes it a lot easier to handle.

I also discovered that if you left the ribbon wound around the item overnight (no heat required) it curled the ribbon also.  However, a word of warning about not baking the ribbon, the humidity will cause the ribbon to relax and without the heat and cool down process the ribbon curls are not as tight making for larger spirals.  This leads me to think that the ribbon over time will just relax completely.

There you have it, beautiful little ribbon ringlets to use in making bows or decorating cards or layouts. 

To see how these look on a card, be sure and catch my post tomorrow,  Friday, July 31st for the Paper Cutz challenge.  I think I’ll be incorporating these in more of my designs.  Hmmm, maybe this will be my signature look.

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