New Beginnings at Anything But a Card Challenge

For Anything But a Card New Beginnings challenge I decided to re-purpose a mailing box and several cardboard tubes to hold my crafting mats.  Several years ago I made a re-purposed a 3” x 5” file box to hold my sketches that would look pretty while sitting on my craft table. This is the Sketch File Box that I completed in 2009.  

 Meanwhile my collection of craft mats were rolled and stored in cardboard tubes . . . nothing pretty about that!  So with a little bit of ingenuity I came up with this finished product.  

I started with a small priority mail box, but any box will do.  It just needs to be wide enough to accommodate the cardboard tubes.  The tubes are re-purposed from wrapping paper or from paper towel rolls and trimmed to fit the interior of the box.  I still had some of the Basic Grey Lucky left in my stash, so it was very easy to match the new craft mat holder to the existing sketch file box. 

 I started by determining the size of holes to cut in one end and used my old school Coluzzle template and swivel craft knife to cut through the cardboard.  Each of the edges of the box were inked with Colorbox Berrylicious. The paper is cut to the exact dimensions and adhered to the exterior of the box with Plaid Mod Podge.  The box was still flat at this point. 

Circles were cut in the flap where the holes were, but are smaller to allow a bit of paper to be tucked down into the tubes.  The paper is clipped, similar to the sewing technique, to allow for the curve.  Tacky tape was carefully placed on the inside of the tube and the tube was attached.  This wasn’t quite finished enough for me, so I also put a strip of paper around the top of the tube (not shown). 

My box was about the same width as the tubes, so I adhered the tubes to both sides of the box as I assembled the box into a closed position.  I used a bit of gesso to fill in the gaps and had to wait FOREVER for it to dry!  The gesso and edges were inked again.  A few more layers of Plaid Mod Podge, and the Craft Mat Storage was ready for my desk. 

 

Here it is on my messy desk next to the Sketch File Box.  Now I notice that the edges of the Sketch File Box have faded to white instead of the pretty purple they once were. 

 

Thank you for stopping by and please come on over and join the fun at Anything But a Card.  The theme is "New Beginnings" and can be re-purposed, or some other art form that references a new beginning!