One Saturday Morning

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This weekend I finally had a Saturday to spend at home, no interruptions, doing whatever my little heart desired, and my heart desired some creativity! So, I broke out my not-so-super-secret-stash of craft projects and spent 6 beautiful hours creating flower arrangements, subway art signs, and a storage bin. It was heavenly! I plan to eventually showcase all of my little projects but I am most excited about my storage bin so today's tutorial focuses on creating quite possibly the cheapest storage bin of all time out of fabric, ribbon, an old cardboard box, and hot glue.

CAUTION: If your name is Heidi Stephenson or Martha Stewart you should probably stop reading now because the closest I came to sewing my fabric box was cutting the fabric. HOT GLUE FOREVER!

 The basic idea for this little project came from Pinterest (wasting my time since 2011) but alas, I forgot to pin the original tutorial so I made it up as I went along :)

Smooth your fabric on a large surface to measure and cut. By measure I mean eyeball it because that is how I roll. I did a practice run by stuffing the fabric into the box, making sure it was touching all four corners, and then flattening it out on each outside panel so there was about 2 inches of fabric on the bottom of the box.This helped me ensure I had enough width and length before I cut; then I cut.

After cutting I did another dress rehearsal (stuff fabric into box smoothing it out to touch all four corners, and holding it flat against each edge) then I started gluing. At first I thought I would glue along each inside/bottom edge and secure the fabric from the outside in but that was a major failure so I started along one long side, gluing about two inches of the fabric to the bottom of the box. I wanted my fabric to be ruched, so I folded it over in a few places and kind of sheered it on. I then stuffed the fabric in the box, flipped it to the other long side and glued that side down.

(I hope this is making sense)

After both long sides of the box were glued in place, I turned to the short sides. Because my fabric was a little too narrow to fully cover each short side, I folded it into an envelope shape (there has got to be a more official word for that) - kind of like the short side of a wrapped gift. I first glued down the top flap, ruching it a little bit as I went. Then I folded one corner piece over, so it was overlapping the top flap, and glued. Then I folded the other corner over and secured it. See, gift/envelope style. I repeated this on the other side taking care to make sure the fabric was secured on the bottom of the box and was as smooth as possible so my box sat flat. 

TA DA!

Since plain white boxes are boring, I added a length of ribbon about 1/4 of the way down the box for a little flair. Instead of gluing the ribbon in place, since you never know when I'll want to change colors, I used a short straight pin to secure it to the fabric, making sure not to go all the way through the box. A little bling on the end (diamond, flower, bow) would be fabulous is you are displaying your box the long way.

I think my little DIY bin turned out perfectly. It may not be Pottery Barn but it was so SO cheap, easy to make and I won't feel the least bit of remorse when I decide to redecorate. (Not to mention it's infinite potential to keep Hubster's school stuff off the coffee table and living room floor) I like it so much, I might be making a smaller version for our remotes; maybe next Saturday :)
 

Hugs, 

   Erin

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Linking to FABULOUS parties:

@ A Diamond in the Stuff
@ Not Just a Housewife