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A Crafty Kid's Cabinet

I have been thinking about creating a craft cabinet in our living room for awhile now.  I don't typically love messes, but one mess that always makes me happy is a crafty mess.  So, to encourage on-the-spot crafting I have added little buckets of markers and crayons around our home.  The remainder of our crafts were being stored in a storage container inside of a storage ottoman in our guest bedroom.  Unfortunately, being so tucked away was not encouraging enough painting and gluing and creating with the boys. 


In fact, I knew I was on to something earlier this week when I pulled those storage ottomans out into the living room to begin the craft cabinet transition.  It didn't take long for the boys to dig right in.


Inside of the ottomans, items were stacked and even snagging a simple piece of construction paper for a a school project was far more work than necessary.

Creating the cabinet wasn't rocket science by any means.  I sifted through all of their supplies, purged anything broken and dried out and put things where they would be easy for the boys to maintain.


When it comes to kids, they consistently remind me that the easier the system, the more likely they are to maintain it.  So, organizing for them means being flexible and relaxed and making sure everything is simple to access, and more importantly, simple to return.

A few containers with specific purposes like our sand bin and our play-doh bin as well as a caddy filled with glues, scissors, paints, brushes, colored pencils and markers all grace the shelves.   Everything is durable and portable and kid friendly.



The rest of their supplies like googly eyes and pipe cleaners and even some flashy sequins, are all tossed within a decorative box on the lower shelf.

The cabinet was working well, but after it was all set-up, strangely enough I started feeling a little... crafty!

So, I did what I love to do and added a little extra organizational fun.

The wooden crate you see there on the shelves, previously held a few random supplies and then sat empty {originally found at our local craft store}.  The boys and I thought it would be a good place to store their loom bands, but first it needed a little love.


So, I gave it two coats of stain, the stain was leftover from our bookcase update we did a few weeks back.


Once the stain was dry, I added in colored patterned paper at the bottom of each slot.


The colors correlated with the loom bands, which we all started dividing out as a family.


A few things received some washi tape lovin', like the lid of a mason jar holding beads.


And the fronts of a few magazine holders, which now hold construction paper and projects that the boys currently have in the works.



No organizing project would be complete without some good labels, so I turned to my trusty Silhouette die cutting machine.


I designed the labels in Silhouette Studio and printed them with my printer and then ran them through my Silhouette to cut them out of sticker paper.


Instant awesomeness.




We had an abundance of crayons so they were tossed into the old bead bucket once those were transferred to a mason jar.  The bead bucket label couldn't be removed, so I just covered it with more decorative paper.


All those quick and simple touches made the cabinet much more playful and colorful; much more "us".


Oh yeah!  And those new beautiful and shiny doors!  Well, they keep all of this crafty clutter nice and concealed.  The only thing about this project that is not concealed, is my smile.  Cheesy, I know.


Fingers crossed that this new setup will keep the creative juices flowing around here; especially with summer break right around the corner.

Good news for you fellow label-aholics!  Silhouette has a promotion going on with both of their machines and their special label making materials.  Just head here and enter ORGANIZING at checkout.

• 1 Printable Cotton Canvas
• 1 Vellum
• 1 Adhesive Washi Sheets
• 1 Printable Adhesive Kraft Paper
• 1 Stencil Material