Scrapbooking & Craft Supplies: Cropper Hopper Ribbon Spool Drawer

This is a product review of the ribbon spool drawer made by Cropper Hopper. The ribbon spool drawer is intended to help crafters organize their ribbon.

I frequently use ribbon in my mixed media art, my handmade greeting cards, my scrapbook layouts and my art journals. I love ribbon and I buy quite a bit of it. I actually realized that I was buying more of it than I needed to, because I didn't have it organized and I'd end up forgetting which ribbons I already had on hand. I used to have ribbon all over the place, and quite a bit of it managed to get tangled up and frayed. I definitely needed to get my ribbon organized.

I purchased a few of the 3 ½ x 3 ½ size ribbon spool drawers by Cropper Hopper. The product is relatively inexpensive, but in this case you definitely get what you pay for. This is not a quality product; it is not durable, it is not stylish, and it is not user-friendly. It IS functional and I do think that having your ribbon organized in these is better than having it laying in disorganized piles on the floor, or in a tangled up mess in a drawer. However, there must be a better solution out there than this!

There were no instructions included, and I had a hard time figuring out how to load the ribbon into the drawer and assemble it. My husband- who is quite mechanical- grew as frustrated with it as I did. We easily figured out that you load the ribbon into the drawer from the top. That's when the difficulty started. A little plastic doodad is included with the drawer, and we could not figure out what it was supposed to be.

After we finally managed to get the ribbon loaded into the drawer, we found the instructions online at Cropper Hopper's web site. They weren't very helpful, though. After consulting the instructions, we realized that the plastic doodad is intended to help keep the ribbon from falling over as you go. However, in my opinion using it didn't make the loading process go any more quickly; it was time consuming to get all the ribbon loaded in the drawer.

It is necessary to measure your ribbon carefully before selecting which size drawer(s) to buy in the first place. If you buy several, they do interlock together so that you can keep your ribbon all together in one place. I did not have any trouble getting my spool drawers to lock together.

Included with each spool drawer, you get a set of foam stick-on "feet" that are apparently intended to help keep your spool drawer from sliding when you set it up on a table top or shelf. I am storing my spool drawers inside a rolling organizer, so I have not actually tested this feature.

Overall I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone. If you are looking for a way to organize your ribbon, I'd advise spending your money on something other than this organizer. If you can't find anything better, the ribbon spool drawer beats having a disorganized mess, but I'd be willing to bet that you can find a better solution. I give the ribbon spool drawer a grade of C-.