Dollar Store Make Over!

Hi everyone! Practical Scrapper Alison here sharing a fun Desk Organizer I made for my eldest daughter using a container I found at the dollar store, old tea and coffee containers and some flowers also from the dollar store.

Have you ever wandered the aisles of a dollar store and thought "hmm, that's cute. I wonder what I could make with it?" Well, I went to my local dollar store the other day specifically to do that. When I saw the hot pink container I thought I could cover it in paper and make something cute for one of my daughters. They had them in several colours so I bought 3 different ones (I have 3 daughters after all!) and then was on the hunt for something to make it pretty. 

I normally would completely bypass the fake flowers but on this trip they called to me. So glad they did! Not only are they gorgeous on the finished desk organizer, they helped hide some of the ugly hot glue!! LOL! :)

Here's a quick tutorial on how I made this.

I gathered my supplies - the ones I'd purchased at the dollar store as well as some old coffee and tea containers I'd been hoarding saving for something  special. My thought was that I could attach the smaller containers to my big one ... somehow!

I knew I wanted to cover these with paper so I used a sanding block to rough it up a bit to allow the tape to adhere better.

Then I carefully measured the heights of my containers and cut a piece of Amy Tangerine paper to fit. I decided to go with yellow for this one as the inside of the pink box had a yellow pattern to it.

I covered both the tea container and the coffee tin with strips of double sided tape then carefully stuck my paper to it. Even though I'd very carefully measured, I still had to trim a bit of extra paper from the top with my craft knife. This left a rough looking edge so I went looking for a solution.

Ta-da! Washi tape to the rescue!! I also wrapped it around the top of the large container for continuity. 

The bottom of the smaller containers needed some embellishment too so I found a coordinating paper and using my notebook edge punch I  added strips to the bottom. I then wrapped some twine around the very bottom (I just used more double sided tape to stick it down). As an added layer of protection I covered the two smaller tins with Modge Podge before using hot glue to attach them to the large container.

My daughter's name is Marley so I found a large glittered chipboard 'm' in my stash and used pop dots to attach it to the bin. Then it was time to embellish with the flowers and these little plastic butterflies I also found at the dollar store.

Now she's got a great little desk organizer to (hopefully) keep everything neat and tidy. 

Thanks for visiting the blog today. Hope I've inspired you to scour YOUR local Dollar Store to see what you can re-purpose. Tell me in the comments what your best find has been.

-cheers! 

Alison