Scarf Organizer

I’m really excited about this newest project, because not only does it help me organize a part of my life that has been desperately unorganized (my scarves!) but it utilizes something that I’ve had lying around as a left over from other projects, and I love when I can find a new use for something like this. You have probably seen something similar out there on Pinterest or other blogs, the ones I’ve usually seen involve plastic shower curtain rings and a hanger.  Sound familiar?  Well I have been wanting to make one for a little while, but most of my scarves are thick and bulky scarves for NYC winters and I wasn’t sure that the shower curtain rings would be large enough.  If I was organizing belts or neckties, or even thin decorative scarves it wouldn’t be a problem, but I felt like I needed to make my organizer out of larger rings, and here is where the really genius part comes in, the part I’m proudest of.  I realized that I could use all of the mason jar lids that I had lying around that I had no use for!  I’ve made a lot of mason jar projects, and while every now and then the project utilizes the lid (my sewing kit comes to mind) usually they just use the glass part of the jar (like my hanging planters.)  Of course if you don’t happen to have a similar stash of mason jar lids, you can apply my tutorial to just about any sort of plastic or metal ring that you have lying around.

Materials: Mason jar lids, hot glue gun, ribbon, scissorsStep 1: Planning.  I was able to put my hands on 7 mason jar lids, so I decided to do a large hexagon shape.  If I had found more I might have done more of a pyramid, but you use what you have, right?Step 2: Begin gluing.  The one thing that makes the mason jar lids harder than, for instance, plastic shower curtain rings, is their slightly odd shape.  This meant I couldn’t just tape them together like most scarf organizer tutorials suggest, so I turned to my trusty hot glue gun.  The key was leaving the two lids lying flat on my table surface and squeezing glue into the space in between.  I knew I wanted the outer most part to just touch, but that left a large gab on the other side so I filled that in with the hot glue, which becomes essentially a spacer.  Don’t worry about how the glue looks, you’ll be covering the whole piece in ribbon anyway. Step 3: Keep gluing.  I found it was easiest to attach the rings into sets of two first.Step 4: Assemble all your pieces.  After gluing the first six rings into sets of two, I carefully connected them to each other, and to the seventh ring, to make my hexagon shape.Step 5: Attach your ribbon.  I decided to buy black ribbon as main color, and then some green ribbon for an accent color.  I decided to cover the whole shape in the black first, and then add the green on the outer edge.  I used approximately 12 yards of black ribbon to cover the whole piece, and this is with 3.5 inch mason jar lids.  You’ll need more or less, depending on the size of your lids and how many you have.  To start wrapping your ribbon you’ll want to start where two of your lids attach to each other, and glue the end of your ribbon to the inside edge of the lid.  I knew I wanted the flat top piece of the lid to be the front of my finished piece, so I kept that in mind when wrapping the ribbon.Step 6: Wrap your first intersection.  After attaching your ribbon you want to carefully wrap it around your first lid intersection.  I used a small drop of hot glue to attach the ribbon on the underside, after looping around the intersection once.  This makes sure it is very secure, and helps to secure the connection between the two lids.  Step 7: Continue wrapping the lid.  I chose to loop my ribbon around each intersection at least twice.  This was so I could be sure of the secure connection, but also because I found it was the best way to make sure all of the metal of the lid was covered with ribbon.  After wrapping the intersection I simply continued on and started wrapping my ribbon around the lid, moving around the curve towards the next intersection.  I found that I could use a small drop of glue to secure the ribbon every few loops, it certainly wasn’t necessary to glue it each time I wrapped it around the lid.  However, because of the funny shape of the lid I did find it necessary to pull my ribbon very tightly so that there were no weird bubbles or bulges.  I wanted it to look tightly fitted to the lid at all points.  Step 8: Continue wrapping.  I originally thought I’d use one piece of ribbon to continuously wrap the whole shape, but I suddenly found myself in one of those horrible math problems where you have a certain number of islands and bridges and you can only cross each one once… Do you know the kind I’m talking about?  Well anyway, there may have been a way to only wrap each section once and cover the whole shape, but I didn’t really care to figure it out.  So I went around two lids, and formed a figure 8 shape, and then cut the ribbon and began on the next two lids.  Eventually I covered the whole shade except the center ring, and so I used one last piece of ribbon to cover the last center ring.  Really it doesn’t matter, with the one sided shape of the lid you can easily hid ribbon ends on the inside edge of the lid and they are hidden from the front. Step 9: Finish your base color.  As I said earlier, I decided to wrap the whole shape in black and then add my light green to the outside edge.  You could also decide to do each ring in a different color and not add any embellishments, that’s up to you.  Step 10: Add embellishments.  For my design I decided to add a stripe of green around the outer edge after I finished wrapping the whole piece in black.  I used a little bit of hot glue to attach the end of the green ribbon into one of the valleys where two lids met on the outside, and then I slowly wrapped it adding a bit of hot glue every inch or two.  The most important part to attach was each valley, so I put hot glue on either side of the valley part and then used my scissors to press the ribbon as far down into the valley as I could. Step 11: Add scarves and enjoy! I’m pretty happy with my organizer, and now I can’t wait to hang it up in my closet.  I decided not to attach it to a hanger because I’m going to hang it from a hook on my closet door.  But, you could easily use the same technique to attach the mason jar lids to a hanger and wrap the whole piece, including the hanger, so that once your are finished you can hang your scarves from the hanging rod along with your other clothes.  Theoretically, depending on your stash of lids, you could also combine two different sized mason jar lids for different types of scarves.  Just make sure to lay it all out before you start gluing any of the lids together! Good luck, and stay tuned next Monday for another organizer, this time aimed at a slightly smaller accessory in your wardrobe!  Ciao, Allison