DIY Cardboard Storage Cubes

I like sewing. I’m pretty sure that comes as no surprise. I haven’t accumulated a whole lot of fabric over the years, but I still need a place to keep what I do have. When we got married and moved into our first place there wasn’t any room for my sewing supplies so they stayed stashed in a garbage bag in the corner of the living room – real attractive. Now that I have more space I decided it was time for a better storage solution.

I love the look of storage cubes, like this, but not so much the price tag that goes along with them. So, I came up with a way to sort of achieve this look with supplies I already had on hand.

We had a few of these square boxes left over from moving. [See Hugo peeking over the edge? He’s so cute!]

So I grabbed two of them and cut off the flaps.

Then I needed something to cover them with. Since this was going to be a temporary solution and not much of the cubbies would be seen anyway, I didn’t want to waste any of my good craft paper or spend money on paint, so I decided to use some pretty tissue paper we had on hand. Obviously, if you wanted a cleaner look it would be better to use something thicker and sturdier.

I measured the inside sides of the box and cut four pieces of the blue tissue paper to go inside. I also measured and cut a piece for the bottom of the box, but that isn’t pictured.

I applied a thin, but even coat of mod podge on each side and the bottom and glued the pieces in place. Then I trimmed the bits of paper that hung over the edge.

Kind of a messy look since the paper’s so thin, but like I said, it wont be seen much, so I wasn’t too worried.

For the outside, I took a full sheet of polka dot tissue paper and wrapped it around two sides of the cube leaving a little bit on the ends to fold over.

Then I trimmed off the extra that hung over the back/bottom of the box.
Next, I folded and glued down the extra bits on the outside of the box.

And did the same for the inside of the box.

But, I still needed to cover the edges of the other two sides.

To do that, I used the scraps I cut off earlier.

I only fully covered two sides since my cubes would be next to each other on a shelf – only the outside sides and top would be visible.



Here they are in the bookshelf next to my desk.

And here they are filled with my fabrics.

Sure beats the garbage bags I was storing my fabric in before!