What is better than a caddy to organize your craft supplies? Making your own caddy! This awesome craft is quick and easy and will sit on your desk and hold all those gel pens that have been lying around for a long time. (or is it just me that has a million colored pens?)
What you will need:
Step 1: Paint your box. The box has to be unfinished cardboard and not have a glossy finish, as paint will just slide right off of the gloss. The box, of course, determines how large your organizer will be. If it's just a small tea package, such as the one pictured above, there will only be room for a few dividers to hold a few pens and pencils. I used a larger box cut down to be wider and deeper than it is tall. The unfinished cardboard was easily covered with one or two coats. You can also skip painting for less hassle and just cover the box with washi tape, especially if you can't find an unfinished box.
Step 2: While the paint is drying, collect clean toilet paper tubes and/or mini toothpaste boxes. These are travel sized toothpaste, the kind dentists give away for free and are about the same height as tubes, just a little smaller around. It might be a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle to figure out which combination of tubes and boxes will fit inside the main box best. As you can see in the picture, I used six tubes and 3 boxes, leaving a gap where a glue bottle and small tape dispenser fit nicely. Once you've decided, wrap washi tape around the containers to cover the cardboard. You could paint these, but the tubes are a lot more difficult to paint than the box. Also, this method excludes the toothpaste boxes since they have a glossy finish.
Step 3: Once the paint is dry, stand the tubes upright in the box and fill with all your art supplies! You can also embellish the box with decorations such as rhinestones, layered stickers, foam stickers, tape, or your own designs in paint. I even used one of my perler bead creations to decorate. If you want to create the perler bead panda, go to "Perler Beads" in the Perfect Project forum.
Have fun with this project! It makes a great caddy for office supplies, school supplies, craft supplies, sewing supplies...whatever you have.