No-Sew Boxes

Article found HERE

We have this fabulous piece of Craigslist furniture sitting in our playroom.  It's intention is to hold lots and lots of toys.

Nope, for this project I didn't paint it, but that is next on the list.  I actually tackled something that has been hiding behind those doors:

Yep, a pair of boxes.  Acting as toy and puzzle storage.  Aren't they purdy?

Not so much.

Here are some of the supplies  I used to spruce them up a bit:

1. Fabric
2. Craft Knife or Scissors
3. Spray Adhesive
4. Yard Stick
5. Cotton Cord
6. Grommets
7. Empty Boxes

I have a bit of a color scheme going in the playroom which is green and turquoise, so to cover the boxes I stuck with fabric in those colors.

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I went with indoor/outdoor fabric for the outside of the box for durability and because of it's thickness {to better hide imperfections}.  I purchased 1 1/2 yards of each and had some leftover when the project was done.

The boxes I selected were equal size and 15" squares {a super sized bin!}.  I started by cutting the top four flaps off so I just had an open top box to play with.

I used the yard stick to measure A LOT and draw straight lines on the back side of the fabric for all of my cuts:

First, I cut a square piece a bit larger than the bottom and used my spray adhesive to attach it to the bottom of the box.

Then I cut two long strips of fabric to wrap along the inside.

Quick tip, it helps to roll the fabric and then unroll as you spray and affix:

So now the inside of my box was completely covered:

Then, I cut square pieces of fabric for two sides of the box.  Enough to wrap the top edge and the bottom edge:

For the corners on the inside, I just cut the fabric at a diagonal and wrapped it down:

So now the boxes looked like this:

Halfway there!

This time, I cut the fabric a little bit shorter so it would just slightly overlap the existing fabric that was wrapped around the corner. 

The spray adhesive rocked for this project.  Everything was nice and easy to affix and it stuck really well.

Two fabric covered boxes later...

I really wanted the kids to have some handles on the front to not only dress up the bins even more, but to make it easy for them to pull them out when searching for their toys.

We started with grommets and a grommet setter:

Next step was to measure, cut holes in the box with the craft knife, pushed the grommet head through, set the grommet head face down on the grommet setter, place the grommet cap on the other side...

And set it!

Leaving us with two holes to feed the rope handle through:

I taped the ends of the cotton rope, to avoid fraying and to make it easy to feed through the grommets:

And just knotted them on the backside so they wouldn't fall through:

Oh my greatness how cute are these bins?!?

I really can't believe I made them myself.  So much more satisfying than running out to the store and spending $80+ dollars on something similar!  Wahoo!

We quickly filled them up!

And placed them in their new home!

Now for the fabulous before and after moment:

The handles make it easy for them to pull out the boxes bins and they store SO much since they are such a great size!

I think more challenges are in order!  It was uber motivating and SO much fun!

Free Photo Birthday Card

Crackle Paint - DIY

This article was found HERE


Thanks to Dollar Store Crafts for featuring this post!

For years whenever I wanted a cool crackled effect on my painted projects I used the very expensive (to me) crackle medium and even bought some paints that were supposed to crack on their own. Because of the cost I did not do anything large and I was sparing in what I did do. Well, thanks to this cheap alternative, I can go a bit crazy and experiment because I found out how to get the crackle effect with Elmer's Glue! It's alot less expensive than any size bottle of crackle medium and just before school it's downright CHEAP.

I've been doing this for awhile but if you go to the Elmer's faq site, you can see the instructions towards the bottom of the page. Four sentences of instructions. Four sentences! I had more than four sentences worth of questions when I first did this!

http://www.elmers.com/diy/project/crackle-finish

On their page Elmer's used wood glue. I used Elmer's school glue or multi purpose glue for ALL of my projects and have always had great results. Even the Dollar Store no name glue works in a pinch. I have never had a "failure to crackle" with these glues.

So this tutorial, as requested, will have lots of pictures and step by steps so you can see what to expect. If you have used crackle medium you know the basics, they are the same, but you will use Elmer's glue. I used multi purpose but I see online that others have used the school glue and even generic school glues. For this project I used Elmer's.



I painted this piece of foam board with flat black acrylic. This is my base coat.




Here is the piece of painted foam board and a piece of painted muslin I have smeared with a generous amount of glue. I used alot so it would show up in the pictures. Let the glue dry til it is tacky, just a few minutes, then paint your contrasting base coat on top. Do NOT wait for the glue to dry all the way or the top coat will not crack. This is one point that you desire tackiness, lol! Let's call it sticky. Alrighty then. For these pics I did NOT thin the top coat of paint.


Try to use long strokes in one direction when painting your top coat. Do not go back and forth. Use long, steady strokes to cover your entire base coat with your top coat. Here is the foam board within a few minutes of painting the top coat of white paint. You can see the cracks forming pretty quickly, it is cool to watch!


Here is the top coat on the painted muslin.



And here is the painted muslin with the crackle effect. Since the muslin has a bit of give the cracks are smaller than the cracks on the wood board.



Here are two more pieces of painted muslin. The piece on the left is painted using turquoise and black. The black on the top left piece has been thinned slightly. The turquoise on the bottom left has not been thinned so it's cracks are not as delicate as the black. The big piece of fabric on the right has been undercoated with burnt umber and chocolate brown, then top coated with THINNED glue and THINNED white paint. The cracks are very small and delicate and hard to see in the pic. They are what I prefer for a doll face or something with alot of fine detail.

And here are some close ups of my sample boards. I tried to give you lots of pics so you can see what to expect when trying this technique.


Foam board with black base coat and white top coat. Glue is not thinned and either is the white paint. Board is about 2" x 4".






The wood boards in the following pics are about 1.5" tall x 5" wide.

Base coated brown on the left and black on the right. Glue is not thinned. Top coat of black on the left is thinned alot, brown top coat on right is thinned just a little.

Black base on the left, turquoise/teal base coat on the right. Glue is not thinned. Turquoise/teal top coat is not thinned. Black top coat on right is thinned alot, very watery.

I used gold Patio Paint for this board and it reacts differently to the glue. Perhaps because Patio Paint stretches a bit? The base coat on the left is P P gold with a watery black top coat. The base coat on the right is black with a Patio Paint top coat. It cracked, but not much. The glue was not thinned for this board.

I hope I've given you enough options that you can see what to expect with this technique. I would suggest experimenting a little til you find the combination that you like the best before using it on a final project. But have fun, it's easy to do and it's really really CHEAP!