“A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” I love to reward myself for little successes, and that especially goes for cleaning, organizing, and other household chores. My prejudice against keeping things neat is simple: I want to skip the cleaning up and move straight to the next fun thing. I think that many people have the same issue. So I’ve resorted to treating myself with storage that is more stylish, more interesting, and, in turn, more fun. The trick is balancing the crafting with the cleaning. I worked this project with a 50/50 time ratio: 1 hour decorating then 1 hour getting my act together. I hope that my little labels and boxes inspire you, and I also would love to hear about your tricks for motivation in the comments, and see your own storage in the CRAFT Flickr pool!

Materials

Boxes
Paper and paper tags
Ruler
Pencil
Pens
Scissors
Eyelets and setter
Photo mounting corners
Small craft frame with brads
Glue stick
Craft glue
Glitter

Directions

I love using brown paper boxes that I’ve saved from gifts, or found at craft stores. It’s easy to mount a little frame to a thin paper box, and it adds sophistication to a recycled container.


Step 1: Trace the frame and cut out craft paper to fit within it.

Step 2: Use the glue stick to attach the craft paper to the lid of the box.

Step 3: Punch the brads through the holes in the frame and mount it to the lid.

Step 4: This box is perfect for holding photographs, and so to mirror that, I attached the tag to the center of the lid with self-adhesive photo mounting corners.


Step 5: Use a ruler to make a straight line across the tag in pencil. Write your text on the line with marker, then erase the pencil.

Step 6: Center the tag on the lid of the box, and use the ruler to make sure it’s aligned in the middle. Mark its position with pencil at each corner.

Step 7: Add the photo corners, and then peel off their backing and stick them to the points on the center of the lid.

Step 8: I wanted to use some glitter for this box, so I decided to mount this tag to the end of the box. That way I can stack things on top without scraping off all the sparkle.

Just like with the photograph tag, use the ruler to center the text, then to center the tag on the box. Then, add about 1/4″ of craft glue to the edge of the tag.

I set the box on it’s end in the lid, then covered the glue with glitter. Using the lid as a glitter-catching tray worked perfectly.

Step 9: For the box that I use for holding ribbon, I thought that a lace accent would make the perfect frame for the tag.

Just measure out the lace for each edge of the tag. Glue on the tag with the glue stick. Then run the glue stick around the paper and add the lace.

For my notions box, I used some cute scrapbooking photo corner elements. They were on sale and I couldn’t resist.


Step 10: Lastly, make any simple tag look more sophisticated with the simple addition of a metal eyelet. I used my trusty eyelet setter and it was done in the blink of an eye.
I hope that you are inspired and encouraged to add some flair to your storage containers. If I can do it, you most certainly can too!