Year after year I lament not having a classy way to display our incoming Christmas cards, especially since we have some pretty creative family & friends, many of whom make their own card designs that are worthy of a gallery showing. Last year I finally did something about it and now I have a place to display the cards and I have spruced up one of those annoyingly random pillars-in-the-middle-of-a-room thingies like we have in the rec room. It’s exceedingly easy, colour customizable and takes about 5 minutes.

1. Confuse or con your friend named ________ (insert gullible friend’s name here) to drive you to the craft store near your house because your sorry butt is too broke to buy a car.
2. At the craft store, spend waaaaaaay too much time browsing the stamps and eventually wander over to the discount ribbon bin. It doesn’t have to be the discount ribbon bin, that’s just where I found mine. If I had not had this ribbon already, I would have bought some of the beautiful ribbons in the new Martha Stewart line that have been highlighted on Black, White Bliss and Try This At Home recently. The ribbon I used is 3 inches wide, velvet and quite sturdy. The edges are wired, but that is not required. Any ribbon will work, as long as you like it.
3. Place the ribbon in a large plastic bin and forget about it for about two years.
4. Pull out the ribbon again and dust it off. Tie a nice puffy bow in one end of the ribbon and cut from the main roll so that both tails are even. I just used a shoelace bow, but if you are a professional bowtie-er or a Marine you might know some better bow knots to make. This one seems to work.
5. Take the remaining ribbon off the roll and let it hang. Tack one end of the ribbon strand to the back of the bow using tiny safety pins or thread. I sewed the ribbon strand onto the bow with burgundy thread and the back of it looks a little like Frankenstein’s neck (sorry.. Frankenstein’s monster’s neck) but it really doesn’t matter as long as it holds. How strong the tacking has to be depends on whether or not you have children or animals who will play the “let’s pull on this and see what it does” game.
6. Buy a roll of cork WAY too large for your project. Not sure why you need to do that, but that’s what I did so I am just writing it down with all the rest. Line your cupboards with the leftover cork.
7. 
8. Cut a long strip (or many smaller ones) equal to the length of the ribbon strand, from the bow to the floor, if you want it that long.
9. Affix this cork to the back of the ribbon strand with hot glue or some other adhesive. Don’t sew it on or the cork will just crumble. In my pictures the bow is already on the wall for this step, but only did that so I could use one hand for the pics. You can do all this on your workbench, of course.
10. 
11. Place your bow at your desired height on the wall with a tack or one of those sticky hook thingies. I don’t think “sticky hook thingy” is the official name for those things, but maybe it should be.
12. Trim the ribbon (and cork) with a V pattern at the height to which you would like it to hang under the bow. Tack the bottom of the strand and cork to the wall to keep it straight and against the wall.
13. Use tacks to tack up cards as they come in, as below. I didn’t have any cards yet, so I hung up random stuff I found for the picture. We have a lot of random stuff.

TA DA! Done. Now send me a card so I can put it up there. Um… please.