  In this article, we introduce a new approach to show the existence and
smoothing of simple normal crossing varieties in a given projective space. Our
approach relates the above to the existence of nowhere reduced schemes called
ribbons and their smoothings via deformation theory of morphisms. As a
consequence, we prove results on the existence and smoothing of snc
subvarieties $V \subset \mathbb{P}^N$, with two irreducible components, each of
which are Fano varieties of dimension $n>2$, embedded inside $\mathbb{P}^{N}$
for effective values of $N$, by the complete linear series of a line bundle
$H$. The general fibers of the resulting one parameter families are either
smooth Fano, Calabi-Yau or varieties of general type, depending on the
positivity of the canonical divisor of their intersections. An interesting
consequence of projective smoothing is that it automatically gives a smoothing
of the semi-log-canonical (slc) pair $(V, \Delta)$, where $\Delta = cH$, $c <
1$, is a rational multiple of a general hyperplane section of $H$. For
threefolds, we are able to give explicit descriptions of the smoothable snc
subvarieties due to the classification results of Iskovskikh-Mori-Mukai. In
particular, we show the existence of unions V = $Y_1 \bigcup_D Y_2 \subset
\mathbb{P}^N$, where $Y_i$'s are smooth anticanonically (resp.
bi-anticanonically) embedded Fano threefolds, intersecting along $D$, where $D$
is either a del-Pezzo surface or a $K3$ surface (resp. a smooth surface with
ample canonical bundle) and their smoothing in $\mathbb{P}^N$ to smooth Fano or
Calabi-Yau threefolds (resp. to threefolds with ample canonical bundle) for
various values of $N$ between $10$ and $163$. In cases when the general fiber
is a smooth Fano or Calabi-Yau threefold, one can choose $c$ such that $(V,
\Delta)$ is a Calabi-Yau pair while in all cases $c$ can be chosen so that $(V,
\Delta)$ is a stable pair.
