Color Block Cards

My letterbox trading card obsession has provided many smallish scraps of paper.  I hate to throw them out and have been gradually filling a box with the small pieces of scrap booking paper.  Last summer, in the midst of all our chaos, there was a pin on interest about using scrap booking paper to make color block greeting cards.  It seemed such a simple solution to my increasing number of scraps.  I cut the various papers using a paper cutter to get straight edges, then tried out various designs until the result was pleasing.  The papers were simply glued to cardstock weight paper that was cut and folded to create a card. 

The project was quick and easy.  My youngest daughters helped create a few more of the cards to use for their friends.  These cards will be used as note cards, so the insides were left blank.

Stylish Storage Drawers

Those ugly plastic storage drawers are great for holding craft supplies.  I use some for my fabric stash, scrapbook papers, stamping supplies and kid's craft stuff.  They hold a lot of items in drawers that are easy to keep organized.  The downside is that the see-through plastic drawers look full of clutter.


A few months ago, I saw how someone had made their drawers look better using fabric.  I loved the look, but didn't want to waste expensive fabric making the drawers look pretty.  Instead, I used scrap book paper.  The cost of the materials for 4 sets of stacking drawer sets was about $2.50 which made my frugal-self happy.  The papers were easy to cut with my long-arm cutter and the whole project only took about 30 minutes.

After measuring the height of each drawer, I cut the 12" scrapbook papers, then used tiny pieces of scotch tape to adhere the corners and center of each piece of paper to the drawer.  The tape was placed on the back of the paper and folded to the top edge of the drawer.  Now my craft area isn't such an eye sore!

  

Fabric Covered Storage Box

My daughters keep teasing me about Pinterest and all the cool things that I see there.  They think that I won't make any of the things that I pin.  To prove them wrong and to keep a record of what worked and what didn't work, I'm going to post some of the projects that I've made from Pinterest.

Homeschooling is a lot of fun and we enjoy the lifestyle as a family.  It does create a lot of things to store and not all of them fit neatly on a bookshelf.  All the flashcards, clocks for practicing telling time, educational cards, learning gadgets are difficult to store.  I usually end up throwing them in a box that was originally used to hold reams of printer paper.  The boxes did the job, but were unsightly in my family room.

I grabbed my handy stapler, some old fabric (previously used for curtains?), some scissors and began covering the box.  I did the bottom first to make sure that there was enough fabric.  After cutting the fabric several inches longer and wider than the box, I folded an inside flap that was turned under to hide the raw fabric edges.  Both inside and outside of the box was stapled to hold the fabric in place.  Pull the fabric taunt and the repeat on the opposite side.

The sides were folded in slightly from the edges to create a smooth edge at the corner of the box.  Due to the extra fabric (created from the folding) extra stapling was necessary.

The box lid was done the same way.  It only took about 15 minutes to do the first one and less that 10 minutes for the other boxes.  I was so pleased to get rid of the ugly boxes that I made several more boxes to hold other items.  Now the odds and ends of life are stored in a manageable way and my shelves don't look like an office supply cupboard.