Crafty Cardmakers - Challenge 56 - Recycled!

This week's challenge is hosted by Lin. You will need to use something that is recycled, for example a pringles container into a pen pot, the inside of a parcel tape roll to make a jewellery box. Alternatively just something on the project that is recycled, ie corrugated cardboard for background, bits of sweet box ribbon, shiny foil etc.

We're sponsored again by the lovely Joanna Sheen who is offering a £10 voucher for her online shop which is crammed full of goodies with new stock arriving all the time! Thanks once again Joanna!

So, onto my project!! A while back I decided to organise my craft area. It's a small space and I do like to have all my essentials to hand, so it was getting a little chaotic. I originally bought a couple of the little collapsing RUBs one of which now holds my ink pads (not my distress inks you understand - they are many fold and have a much larger A4 box in which to sit(!!)), and the other holds my glue, glaze, glitter glue, and a variety of sticky tapes.

The rest of of the stuff - rulers, scissors, pokey tool, pencils, bone folder, craft knife etc etc etc were all dumped into a cylindrical box, which had originally contained a lovely set of smellies (a present for my birthday). Great in principal, except that it's a rather large and deep box - so I kept losing the smaller items inside it!!

 

So when this challenge came up, I decided it was time to do something with it to make it really useful. The other recycled items I used were: the carboard tube from the inside of a roll of wrapping paper, the insides of 3 sticky tape reels, and the lid from an aerosol can.

Now, I did kind of like the floral design of the box, but it's not really what I wanted for this item, so I used a gold spray paint (a can that someone kindly gave me a long time ago - but I've never really had a use for) to change the colour.

I have several pairs of scissors (all colour coded - grey for sticky stuff, green for paper, pink for ribbon, and my little decoupage scissors - sad I know, but my Mum always said never to cut sticky stuff with paper scissors, and never to cut paper with fabric scissors!!) and I wanted to be able to get to them easily, so I cut the cardboard tube into four equal lengths, and sprayed them gold. These would serve as individual holders for each pair. 

I attached a circle of thick card (made from several layers of thinner card) to one of the tape reels, then used the other two to provide the structure of a cylinder that would fit into the larger box. I made sure that all the tools it would hold would stand proud at the top and not disappear inside. This too was sprayed gold!!

My original idea was to also spray paint the clear plastic top from an aerosol can, and use this to hold the very little things - like the needles I always have around to unblock glue and glaze bottles!! I found, however, that the plastic wouldn't take the spray paint!! But a solution was to hand - the spray paint that I was using had a gold plastic top - so I used that instead!! Problem solved.

The final part of construcation was to stick all of these elements inside the main box with strong tape, leaving an area where I could put my many rulers!!

I found some Papermania Creative Tones Border Strips in Ivory and Black in my stash, and cut them using Spellbinders Edgeabilities (had to get them in there somewhere!!). I then took a couple of wide strips of double sided adhesive and got very messy with gold gilding flakes (I thought it was only glitter that I managed to get absolutely everywhere). I then cut smaller strips from this to edge the top and bottom, and the remainder was used around the middle.

I have to say that I am very pleased with the result. My craft area is reasonably organised, and I can find the things I need when I want them (except when I've already taken them out, put them down, and they have disappeared under the mountain of paper and ribbon that has accumulated - oh well)!!

So, why not have a go at making something yourself!! Pop over to the Crafty Cardmakers Blog to check out what the other Design Team members have been up to!! And remember, it doesn't have to be something large - just as long as it includes something recycled!! Go on - have a go!! And if you are interested in becoming part of the Design Team, then this is your opportunity. Several members of the team are poorly, and one has stepped down - so we are looking for new members. Just add DT to your entry!!

Off now to do busy things!!!

Cxxx