Tutorial: Headband Storage

My children love headbands, but I hate them. Not because they aren't cute, but because we have never had a decent way to store them. This means they end up everywhere and I can't stand it. Last week, I was playing with one found underneath my computer desk in our basement and happened to have a tower of blank CD's next to me. That's when i realized it would slide right onto the CD tower, but that the CD tower was too slippery to hold.

I went on a hunt for a container similarly circumferential and found the answer in my kitchen. And oatmeal container. Add some cute paper and ribbon and you have an headband holder everyone can love. So let's get to it!

1 full sized oatmeal container

2 pieces of patterned scrapbook paper of same design

scrapbook adhesive runner (or other adhesive option)

17" grosgrain ribbon (or other non-slipper ribbon)

paper trimmer (or ruler and scissors)

hot glue gun to secure lid (optional...read more in step 10 below)

1. If you need to buy a new container for this project empty the contents of your oatmeal container into a gallon ziplock bag and store for later use. Copy cooking instructions from container onto ziplock front with a permanent marker.

2. Measure the height of your oatmeal container. Mine was 9&1/2” tall from UNDER the lip to the bottom. Take off ¼” from that measurement.

Your paper will not need to come all the way down because you will be covering the bottom with ribbon. I found out the hard way that it’s too difficult to get the bottom edge exactly right with the paper only.

3. Cut both pieces of 12x12 patterned paper to 9&1/4” high. Set one piece aside. Cut the other to 5 inches wide.

4. Cover the back of your 5x9&1/4” piece with adhesive. I used a scrapbooking adhesive roller to achieve this, but you could try glue stick or other adhesive that won’t cause bubbling.

5. Place this piece over the back seam of your oatmeal container and adhere to box. Make sure you line up the paper under the top rolled lip of the container.

6. Put adhesive onto back of 12x9&1/4” patterned paper. Adhere to container, making sure it will properly cover both edges of back paper piece.

7. Cut length of ribbon to 17” long.

8. Fold one edge of ribbon back ¼” and secure to create finished edge. Cover back of ribbon with adhesive.

9. Adhere to bottom edge of oatmeal container, cover paper seam.  Make sure you glue down the unfinished edge first and overlap it with the edge you taped down on top.  I used a dot of Hot Glue to secure ribbon onto container, since scrapbook adhesive sometimes doesn't stick as well to grosgrain ribbon.

10. Use hot glue to fix plastic lid permanently onto oatmeal container. This step is optional, you may also choose to store barrettes or flowers for hair inside the container, but my kids would figure out this was a vessel and fill it with something, likely water, within the first ten minutes. So I glued down my lid!

11. Store headbands on container. They stay put, but slide on and off easily and it can hold up to 20 headbands, depending on thickness. Wowza! That’s a lot of headbands! 

Note: the top headband is a stretchy baby headband (see my easy tutorial here).  They fit on and stay as well, just be sure if you have a newborn baby that they don't overstretch to fit the container or they will become too stretched out to stay on baby's head. 

Now seriously, is that not cute and functional!?!

Between this and the hair bow holder tutorial you'll be all set!

Do you have a solution for storing the headbands in your house?

Or are you heading to the cupboard to grab your oatmeal box right now?

Please share!