LAF: My first big project: A ribbon holder!

Does your collection of ribbon look like this?

Well fear no more! A while back, like back in October of 2010 I found a blog that featured a really cute ribbon holder. I LOVED what she made and I HAD to have one for myself! Jonie over at Just Between Friends was the mastermind behind the project and featured her first post here and then gave a more detailed tutorial here. Check her blog out!

So since I had to have one for myself, I went out and bought all of the supplies I needed to make this beauty. Here is what I got:

~3 pieces of wood from Ikea found here where one piece was cut exactly in half

~One pack of bead board that I purchased from Lowe's that looks like this

~ 4 wooden dowels that I purchased from JoAnn's. (Here is the thing about the dowels...now that my project is done I realized that purchasing the dowels from JoAnn's was probably a bad idea. They are not that thick and because of how thin they are each row hangs further down than it should, blocking out the next row of ribbon. I will be going out to Lowe's or somewhere else to purchase different dowels that are thicker sometime soon!)

~Nails

~Screws

~Black Paint (I just bought 2 larger bottles of black paint similar to this but any spray paint or other paint would probably work just as well)

~Wood glue

How I made it:

*The first thing I did was cut the one piece of wood from Ikea exactly in half.

*Next we (my Husband and I) took one of the larger pieces of wood that would be used for the bottom of the shelf, and drew 15 dots that would be used to hold the dowel rods. We measured 1 1/2 inches up from the front of the wood and drew each dot 2 inches apart, which allowed us 15 holes. My husband then used a 1/4 inch drill bit and drilled out the holes but did NOT go all the way through the piece of wood! Here is what ours looked like before the holes were drilled:

*Next we put the three pieces of wood together using screws. I have no clue what size screws they were since my Husband got them out of his supply of nails and screws.

*Once the three pieces of wood were all together we had to measure out the bead board. Using the bead board from the package this is what the holder would have looked like without the bead board being cut:

*After my Husband did some measurements and then some cutting we applied the bead board to the back using nails. Here is the back of the holder without the last piece attached:

*Once attached we were left with this:

*The last few things we had left to do before painting including drilling holes on each side of the wood where the long dowel rods would go and then cutting one dowel rod into 15 pieces that were each 2 inches long, and then gluing them into the holes. Once this was done, I painted the first coat of paint. Here is a picture after the first coat of paint:

*After some sanding and another coat of paint here is the final outcome that I couldn't be happier with!

*I also added some containers to the top that are just sitting up there to hold random items that I work with a lot. Those containers were purchased from the Container Store.