Crafty Cat: Get Organized!

Resident crafter Cat Morley shares her tips on upcycling everyday materials into stylish storage solutions

By Cat Morley
Published: July 23rd, 2009 | 11:45am

If you feel like you're looking for a needle in a haystack when searching through your craft supplies, here are some tutorials to get you organized.

Needle Matchbook

You Will Need
     • Card
     • Styrofoam
   • Scissors
     • Glue
     • Needle
     • Ruler
     • Pencil(s)

1. Cut a piece of card 5 cm wide and 15 cm long. Decorate the card on one side. Draw lines 4 1/2 cm down, 5 cm down, 10 cm down, 10 1/2 cm down, 13 1/2 cm down and 14 cm down.

2. Score along each of the lines and fold in to shape. Cut a thin piece of styrofoam 5 cm long, 3 cm wide and 1/2 cm deep. Glue this in to the bottom section of the matchbook.

3. Fold the card around the styrofoam and glue in to place.

4. Pierce evenly spaced holes along the inside ridge with a thick needle. Stick your needles in, fold up and pop in your pocket.

Craft Supply Storage
Recycle and repurpose old fruit, vegetable, and chocolate boxes!

You Will Need
    • Plastic Box Packaging
    • Chocolate / Fruit Box
    • Felt
    • Ribbon
    • Glue Gun

1. As you go through your everyday life, start holding on to fruit boxes, chocolate boxes, and any heavy-duty plastic packaging. I'm a bit of a hoarder so this is easy for me!

2. You can use small plastic boxes with tight closing lids to hold small bits and pieces, such as paper-clips and other stationery.

3. Cheap plastic fruit boxes that don't have lids come in various sizes work well as drawer organizers.

4. If you want to store finer materials, such as silk threads, ribbons, and embellishments, delicately, take a large plastic box with a lid, and a square of felt. Trace around the bottom of the box in chalk onto the felt. Cut out the felt and use a glue gun to stick it to the bottom of the box.

5. If your boxes are going to be kept out on display, you can spruce them up by glue-gunning a ribbon around the outside. (I use ribbon from a chocolate box).

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Cat Morley is a 23 year old Scottish crafter, now living in London and running her Web site, Cut Out + Keep. Having started the site five years ago as a personal blog, it became a social network (and her full time job) after finishing university in 2007. The site has become home to over 6,000 step-by-step craft tutorials, submitted from members across the globe. She is also the editor of the site's accompanying online magazine, Snippets.