Red and Black Week: Printing on Ribbon

Welcome to my final post for Sophistique Noir's Red and Black Week.

Firstly, I have used two different tutorials from around the web to help me create my ribbons: Scrap 'n Doodle's post and this tutorial from As The Card Rack Turns.

This post is my attempt to follow the above instructions and produce something for myself (which of course will be red and black themed).


I used:

• White card (sturdier than paper so it won't buckle under your ribbon)
• Double-sided sticky tape
• Normal tape
• Sewing scissors and scissors you don't mind getting sticky (mine need regular de-gunking due to card-making)
• Cheap white cotton ribbon (30p/metre) for testing and red satin (45p/metre) for the actual printing. A metre is sufficient for one printed ribbon.
• According to the tutorials, cotton is better, but my local haberdashery didn't have much choice, and I wanted red ribbon.

I decided to find a quotation from Wuthering Heights to print onto my ribbon; I used wuthering-heights.co.uk to find a quotation about the moors, which I'd love to visit one day.


"There was no moon, and everything beneath lay in misty darkness : not a light gleamed from any house, far or near"

Wuthering Heights by Emilie Bronte

 
The text font is Monotype Corsica, and the size is 16. I also rotated it 90 degrees to the right in order to fit more words on the page.

(Or as I realised afterwards it might have been easier to switch to landscape. I prefer to just adjust the size so it matches the actual paper to give more accuracy)

I also created a reocurring star pattern for fun. If anyone else would like to use it, I would love to give you the word document, but I have no idea how to put it on my blog. Does anyone know if I can do this?

I first printed it onto my piece of white card to test it, plus it gave me the exact position the ribbon should be on the paper, and mark with a pencil which way up it goes.

(As you can see from my photo, I forgot to mark which way it came through the printer the first time.)

I placed the double-sided tape along the pattern, then the test ribbon (white cotton) on top, with a small piece of normal tape at either end to stop the ribbon ends snagging.


Make sure for your nice ribbon that the double-sided tape is slightly wider than the actual ribbon so the ink doesn't catch on the edge of the ribbon.


Once you're happy with the result, repeat with your final ribbon. If you'd like extra length, cut double the length of the paper and wrap one end of the ribbon neatly round the end of the paper, and tape the remaining ribbon to the back of the paper, again ending with a bit of tape to 'seal' the end of the ribbon.

 

Leave to dry so nothing smudges, then carefully peel it off.



Also, you can stick it down again and repeat the above steps if you want to print along the next length of the ribbon.



(Though the ribbon cannot overlap on the edge of the paper that goes into the printer first; my printer thought there was no paper and wouldn't print on it. Or alternatively as I've just discovered, print on a normal piece of paper and feed your ribboned paper into the printer before it closes.)



I'd also recommend printing your red ribbon and black onto white seperately, to avoid what happened to me (above right photo). Hopefully when I use the ribbon this won't be visible, but at least I'll know for next time :)

After I'd printed the first strip of stars, and the black writing on red ribbon, I changed the writing to red with a black background to print onto the white cotton.

You may also want to quickly sew the ends of the ribbon to stop fraying.

The black printing onto white ribbon turned out to be slightly grey, and it also smudged the edge of my red ribbon.

Otherwise, I'm quite happy with the result.

Please comment if something's unclear. If anyone decides to print their own ribbon, I'd love to see photos.