DIY Network

Making Craft-Supply Holders and Dispensers From "DIY Crafts" episode DIC-151

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Figure A Figure B Figure C Store plastic grocery bags in this handy dispenser made from a cracker box. Figure D Figure E Figure F Figure G Figure H Figure I

Craft-Supply Holders

Suzanne McNeill, owner and founder of Design Originals, explains how to recycle pizza and detergent boxes into great craft-supply holders. All it takes is a little Con-Tact® paper to turn a plain box into a beautiful container.

Store out-of-season wreaths in pizza boxes (figure A).

Cover a pizza box with black-and-white-checked Con-Tact paper, and use it to store the kids' artwork. Label the outside of each box with the child's name and grade level to keep the boxes organized by year (figure B).

Cover laundry-detergent boxes with Con-Tact paper or fabric, and store magazines or note paper in them. Use Velcro® or a button with elastic thread wrapped around it for the closure (figure C).

Plastic-Bag Dispenser

Carol Duvall, host of HGTV's The Carol Duvall Show, designed a plastic-bag dispenser from a cracker box. Here's how she describes it and how she made it.

"I guess it's a good thing that I switched my letters and the like to the basket, since the monkey has apparently moved into the shoebox. I don't know what corner of my brain today's idea came from, but I thought it might work for some of you: a cracker box for dispensing those plastic bags from the grocery store. These boxes worked for me for quite a while, until the bags began to get ahead of me! I think they're like hangers, in that they multiply when they're left alone."

Materials:

Cracker, cookie or cereal box
Scissors
Magic Cover® or heavy-duty Con-Tact® adhesive-backed paper

1. Empty the box, and remove any waxed-paper lining.

2. Cut a half circle or a bit more in the bottom of the box, and let it come up on the back side just a bit (figure D).
   

3. Put a piece of sturdy cardboard across the front of the box for reinforcement, then cover everything with adhesive-backed paper such as Magic Cover or heavy-duty Con-Tact paper. Cut out a matching hole in the bottom (figure E).

4. Nail to the back of a door or another convenient, out-of-the-way place.

5. Push plastic bags in at the top, and remove them as you need them, one at a time, through the bottom hole.
   

Mary Lyons, host of DIY Crafts, suggests using the bottom of a Goldfish-cracker box (jumbo size), cut to the right height and covered in contact paper, as a storage box for CDs (figure E).

An empty soup can be made into an attractive pencil holder by adding a decorative cover. Mary chose a polymer clay cover with the addition of some metallic leaf. Simply roll the prepared clay cover over the can (figure F), trim off the excess, then bake in the oven at 265 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Turn a coffee can into a decorative container for holding picnic utensils.

1. Measure and cut a strip of cardboard to size so that it will cover the can.

2. Lay out a piece of fabric slightly larger than the cardboard strip.

3. Use spray adhesive to attach the cardboard to the back side of the fabric. Fold the extra fabric over the ends and bottom of the cardboard strip, but leave a little extending at the top (figure G).

4. Spray a little more adhesive onto the back of the covered cardboard, then wrap it around the can. Tuck the excess fabric at the top over the lip of the can (figure H). Add a rope handle if you like (figure I).