Cardboard Movie Reels | DIY

Supplies | For ONE reel

two cardboard pizza rounds

empty cardboard ribbon spool

elmers glue

paint

Ok, so I am lucky enough to have a family business that I can go to if I ever find myself needing the cardboard circles used under pizzas. "he he" So I marched myself over and picked up four 12" rounds and four 14" rounds. If you don't have a family business to get these at though, I'm pretty sure that you could walk into any pizza restaurant and ask for them. I'm certain they wouldn't have any problem selling them to you for a couple dollars.

And as far as the other supplies needed, an empty ribbon spool is easy to come by. You can either be like me and save all mine just in case I would ever need them for a project such as this, OR you can go to a craft/fabric store and ask them if they might have any or if they don't, they will probably hold them for you when they do.

So, you could make these any size, but I chose the 12" and 14". 

Take two of them (same size obviously) and your empty ribbon spool. Glue one round to your empty ribbon spool, trying get it as centered as possible. Then, flip it over and glue the other side to the second round. Easy as that. 

Now, you could hand paint them, but I choose the faster and "cleaner" in my opinion way of spray painting them. So spray them all silver, gold, pink, purple . . . whatever color you want, basically.

I didn't bother flipping them over to spray the bottom as mine will be sitting on a table. But if you were planning on hanging them from the ceiling or leaning them upright in some way, I would recommend painting them entirely. 

When the spray paint was dry, I simply found a circle to trace (in my case, it was a disposable plastic cup) and traced circles all the way around it and in the center. You could do 4,6, or 8, depending on how large your circles are. For this one, I did 6 and then a center. Then I just hand painted the circles using a darker shade of my main color. And there ya' have it!

I ended up doing the 12" ones in silver/gray and the 14" ones in a bronzy color.