My daughter has had her first year doing summer swim team and has done very well. She has earned about 35 ribbons between 1st and 4th place. This has been quite an achievment for her but now she has all these ribbons with not enough room on her bulliton board to display them all. She had started out the season hanging them from a swim trophy that she has but now she just has so many. I was thinking of doing a scrapbook for her but I'm not a scrapbooker. Other idea is a shadow box but I think she already has to many for that and then she will surely add more next year. Any ideas on what I should do with all these ribbons?
Thank you for all the ideas. I finally decided not to be afraid of the scrapbooking route and have realized that a simple scrapbook is a quick project nowadays. I picked up a cute scrapbook, some 12X12 colored paper, and some glue dots from Target. My daughter was thrilled. She planned the pages out and it is now half done. I may have created a scrapbook monster in her now! She is doing pictures from swim team and pages with ribbons on alternating pages. It is adorable and will be so great to be able to show people without taking them up to her room or getting dust or fingerprints all over them.
Get a long dowel rod and suspend it from top of ceiling with fishing line up against the wall and slide them on as she wins them. It could go all the way across one wall. Or you could make then into a window valance!
Good luck!
An idea I saw for children's artwork could work. Save all the ribbons for one season, hanging them wherever you find room. At the end of the season, display them in an interesting form on the floor/bed/whatever and take a picture of all of them. You then have the memory of the ribbons without all the clutter. If she swims a lot of seasons, those pictures could even be made into one of those books you see at all the picture sites.
I have TONS of ribbons so what I did was get a 3 ring binder/notbook & those clear report covers (has 3 holes punched in them to put in binder) & I used a dab of clear tape to tape them inside the pages (put the tape on the string not the ribbon b/c the tape or any sticky substance will ruin the ribbon...make it sticky & even change the color of the ribbon, I tried it so believe me, just tape the string) & made a 'flip book' w/all my ribbons & certificates. You can use 'both' sides of the clear page by placing the same size ribbons back to back & placing them in the page. It may be tricky but I did it. If she has those big 'rosette' type ribbons they probably won't fit due to the rosette plus they're more heavy & can be hard to flip over but you can just play around w/it to see what works best. After filling the book, I placed it on one of my trophy shelves & left the cover open so that people can see my 'award book'. If they want to thumb thru it, no biggie b/c the ribbons & certificates are protected, the plastic you can just wipe clean w/damp papertowel...VERY lightly damp, just enough to wipe a spot off--you don't want to soak it. As she collects more ribbons, no problem, just add more pages til it's time for a new notebook. When we moved to our new home, the awards got put up since I'm grown & I guess it doesn't matter about those things now but probably will get put back out again if we move to a permanant home. Good luck!
What I did is I got a box and my ribbons- I have about 115 but you can save up or get a smaller box, so what I did was I got modge podge and payed the ribbons all over it then put the modge podge on top of them and it dries clear so it doesn't matter how much you put on.. I thought it was very cool
Scrapbooking is not that hard. Buy a kit at Sam's or Wal-Mart. That will give you all the basics you need at the best price ($32 at Sam's). Work on it together with her. Once you have the materials and everything laid out, it is a doable, 2-hour project. One of the big things about scrapbooking is writing along with just putting stuff on a page, so record some brief memories to include on the pages. 35 is a lot, though, so I'd just include the 1st and 2nd place finishes and quietly "disappear" the rest. Or make 2 scrapbooks - one for her to take when she's an adult, and one for you to keep.
My oldest shows and jumps horses. Her ribbons were overtaking her room so we took cotton twine and pinned it up around the room where the wall and ceiling meet and we hang her ribbons from that. We have 2 sides done and working on the third. If we make one full trip around, then I guess we will drop down and make another run!
My daughter ran summer track after second grade and had over 30 ribbons. My sister took them to her frame shop and put them in a large shadow box by fanning the first place ribbons together, then fanning the 2nd place ribbons together, and so on. My daughter is now 21 and still keeps this on her wall. It is a very special memory for her, as she is now physically unable to run track.
Could you have someone make a quilt out of them? Like attach each ribbon to a quilt square and sew the squares together?
Get a scrapbook, it doesn't have to be fancy...just a place to store them all!!:)
I know how you feel about scrapbooking. I think I would put them in frames and to keep from putting them all in one frame separate them by years or months and put a special picture in it from one of the meets that she was in during that time. That way she can see all the medals she won for that month and have a special picture to remember a certain special time. Have her help you do it and it will be great mom/daughter time. Have fun
I had the same problem with my gymnastics ribbons as a kid. We made a clothesline with string in my room and put each new one up there. It was great to look at my accomplishments before bed. We started out doing it in a corner, and eventually started putting any kind of ribbon I got on one that went across my room. At the beginning of the next season, we would take the ones down from the year before (my mom kept just a few important ones in a shoe box) and start over. I loved it!
you could get a sheet, cut it in strips and put it up as a border at the top of the wall.you could pen then to to sheet with those little gold safty pens. For the 1st year put a number 1. That way you could add the # 2 the next year. They would be out of her reach now and a great display for when she is older.
J.
An easy way to scrapbook is to get one of those photo albulms with the sticky pages. I would put one or two ribbons per page, and if there are any picutes of those meets I would put them with the ribbons of each event.
