The bathroom might be the hardest room in the house to keep organized because it seems as though toiletries, washcloths and errant rolls of toilet paper seem to multiply on their own. Cute storage boxes are plentiful in stores, but they’re often pricey.
This utterly attractive bathroom storage box DIY project puts Amazon cardboard shipping boxes to great use. After you craft a cute inner liner for the box, cover the outside with rope. Choose to use a single color of rope, stripes of different colors or a more elaborate pattern. The storage box can be put to immediate use corralling bathroom clutter.
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Materials
- Amazon cardboard box
- Rubber cutting mat
- Utility knife
- Ruler
- Sheet of paper
- Pencil
- One yard fabric
- Grid ruler (optional)
- Colored fabric marking pencil
- Scissors
- Straight pins
- White thread
- Sewing machine
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
- Thin rope in several colors
- Rubber cutting mat
- Utility knife
- Ruler
- Sheet of paper
- Pencil
- One yard fabric
- Grid ruler (optional)
- Colored fabric marking pencil
- Scissors
- Straight pins
- White thread
- Sewing machine
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
- Thin rope in several colors
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Instructions
1. Place the cutting mat on your work surface and center the box on it upside down with the four flaps splayed out.
2. Cut off the flaps from the box with the utility knife.
3. Measure the height, depth and width of the box. Ours is 18” by 9”, and it has a depth of 8 ½ ".
4. Spread out the fabric on the work surface, patterned side up.
5. Make a sketch on a piece of paper of the pattern for cutting the fabric, which will be a cross that will fit inside the box. Use the measurements from step 3, adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance to the figures.
6. Use a marking tool and a grid ruler or regular ruler to indicate the areas you plan to cut. Measure and mark the first corner and cut that section out.
7. Fold the fabric in half, lining it up so the cut corner shows where the second corner should be cut. Mark it and use a ruler to collect the marks, and cut along those marks.
8. Fold the fabric in half again so the cut-out corners line up with where the third and fourth corners will be. Mark them, using a ruler to create straight lines, and cut them out.
9. Unfold the fabric pattern side up on the work surface.
10. Bring each side of the open corners together and pin with straight pins. The fabric should resemble the box.
11. Sew each pinned edge with the sewing machine using a 1/4 inch seam, removing the pins as you go.
12. Place the liner inside the box, folding the edge over the top a little to hold it in place.
13. Smooth out the liner so its corners match up with the corners of the box.
14. Lift the top fabric edge that hangs over one of the box's longest sides, and apply hot glue to the cardboard.
15. Press the fabric to the glue so it affixes well, and allow the glue to dry.
16. Repeat steps 14 and 15 on the other sides of the box.
17. Choose rope to start wrapping the box (don't cut the rope from the spool), and apply a strip of hot glue to one of the box’s bottom corners.
18. Press the rope end firmly to the box corner.
19. Continue gluing one bit of rope at a time to the box and going around the entire bottom of the box, working your way up until starting another color of rope on the box. At that point, cut the rope from the spool.
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20. Repeat steps 17 to 19 as you add different colored rope in the pattern you chose.
21. Bring the rope all the way up to the top edge of the box so it conceals the overlapping liner fabric, and cut the final rope from the spool.