Sunday, September 21, 2014

Shoebox turnes into caddy (photo heavy tutorial)

I am a complete sucker for caddies, baskets, containers, boxes and anything that holds items. Thanks goodness I am a scrapper so I need a lot of those to store all my supplies. I have the cutest white metal containers that have pink numbers on there. They store my bling, my stamps and my glue stock. I love the two galvanized wired baskets with handles that store my wooden embellishments and my made cards.
A few weeks back I came acroos a tutorial on Pinterest that showed how to make a caddy from a single shoebox. Right up my alley as you can imagine. 
So I Pinned it.  I thought I Pinned it and went looking for it after we bought our little lady some winter boots. The perfect box for a caddy. But my Pin was nowhere to be found. So I had to rely on my photographic memory................ uhm, well, just on what I remebered seeing while Pinning it. Or actually; not Pinning it. Well, you get the point. 

I made photos of the work in progress so you can see what I did and try it yourself when you have a shoebox ready. I apologize for the quality of the photos but I took them in a kind of dark hallway and did not turn on any light.............

First you take the box (do NOT put the lid away, you will need it later!) and measure the long side of the box. In my case it was 30cm (about 12"). I marked the middle both on the top and bottom of the box and  used that mark as the middle of my 10cm..... 

You lost it already right? 

You wil have to cut a triangle out of both long sides. Trust me, the photo will clear this all up. I measured the long side and came to 30cm. I divided that in 3 so that the finished product would look like a caddy. That is the 10cm I was talking about before.  So you divide the box length in three and that is the amount you will need to cut out. So on my box: I measured 5cm from the middle to both sides and cut it to the mark on the bottom of the box (the mark that shows the middle)
Your box will now look like this:  

Now you need to fold the box in half, You can score from the bottom of the triangle to the bottom of the triangle across the box. What I did was this. I put my ruler in the box en then folded the box with the ruler in there. No fuzz, just fold.......
Did I already tell you that the easuring you did before is the only measuring you will do in this project? Cool, right? 
After folding it your box should look like this: You must admit, it already looks like a caddy, right?
From now on things will only get easier. 
Now you need the lid to make the sides. Simply put the lid over the side (i did not take a photo of this but let me try to explain: The lid will have to stand up straight and cover the side of the caddy. It will look way to long...... 
Mark the side of the caddy on the box and do this for both sides. Cut the lid of the box. After cuttong your lid will look like this: 
Now attach your lid pieces to the caddy and tape it together. I used duck tape but I guess you can use packaging tape or any wide tape. As long as it sticks.
This is what your caddy will look like when it is unfolded. (that little foot you see is our little lady.....)
Next, fold the box over into a caddy shape and tape the bottom together so the caddy will remain a caddy no matter what.  
I simply put duck tape over the bottom sides so it also functions as a protector of the caddy.

And voila, you are done!!!!! This is the actual caddy aftyer 15 minutes of work. 
Now you can cover it with fabric, paper or even paint. You can make a handle in the top middle but I did not do that. 
I covered mine with double sided wrapping paper and now I need to find something to put in...... I had no special technique for covering it, I just made sure all sides could be covered by the paper and wrapped it like a gift. 
And yes, the paper does look wrinkly but that is just the Tacky Glue not being dry yet. I have had so many Tacky Glue expereience that I now know things will all look well in the end. They do.

I hope this all made sense. Please ask if you have any questions! Thanks for stopping by and have a great and creative week! 

3 comments:

  1. What a great project, Debby! I can think of at least 10 artsy items which would be perfectly suited for this caddy! Love the colors and patterns of papers you chose. Great to use wrapping paper to cover this! Thanks for sharing!

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    1. Thanks Kay. I saw a caddy filled with empty cans and them utensils in them. But hey, a craft project needs crafty items in there................

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