Newspaper organizer

I hope you are all having a wonderfully crafty Saturday afternoon!!

Today I'm going to share with you a modified tutorial from a book I just recently purchased. One yard Wonders

Find it on Amazon here

I think many of these projects are neat, but the instructions can be quite cryptic. It took me a good 30 minutes of reading and look at the pictures over and over again until it finally sank in what they were trying to 'teach' me.

One of the projects in this book was really interesting, but I don't have easy access to 30" heavy interfacing, the largest interfacing my local hobby store sells is 20"

So I decided to make this out of newspaper, and alter the project a bit to fit my budget and time constraints (another pharmacology exam on Wednesday...eeek!)


Here is my finished project so you can get an idea, each of the squares is about 4" by 4"

First gather your supplies:
- scissors, paper cutter (optional)
- tape
- glue stick
- newspaper
- cereal box
- ruler and marker







Now trim your newspaper to make a 22" square using your ruler/scissors/paper cutter

Now grab your ruler and marker and on all 4 sides make a small mark at the following points:

1" 3" 5" 9" 11"  13"  17"  19"  21"

Make vertical folds lining up the marks from one end to the opposite end

like this:

Now make horizontal folds

Now fold the the newspaper so you have "peaks" at the 3" 11" and 19" points like this...

Now fold them kinda flat like this

Follow your horizontal lines and fold a peak at the 3" mark like this

Fold up your vertical pieces and fold them so you make tiny triangles and tape them like this

Flip it over and tape the 1" flap to the bottom

Flip it back over and make a peak at the 11" mark and repeat the corner fold and tape

Make the corner folds on the other side of the peak too

Make the final peak at the 19" mark fold your corners and tape

Flip it over and tape the other 1" side down, and now tape all your squares together to reinforce them

Take your cereal box, marker and scissors and trace a line all the way around your newspaper, cut about 1/2 inch on the inside of your line so you can't see the cereal box from the side

Now glue down with your stick glue

And you are all done!!

Yay Happy dance!!!

Now for the really fun part! Organizing!!

I have a large sandwich bag full of buttons, and every time I need to find the perfect button I had to dump the whole thing out on my table and spend about 15 minutes searching for the right color and size.....

Now however, they are all organized!

Check that out! How cool is this?!?!?!

Best part is they stack, and fit perfectly on my shelf!

I have a feeling I will be making more of these in the near future to organize my bathroom drawers, desk drawers, beads, and pretty much anything else!! I'm also considering mod-podging one to see if it will hold up a little better under regular wear and tear- and eliminate the rub off newspaper print.

This would be a great project to do with  the kids, they could paint and decorate them to organize small toys (Barbie doll clothes and shoes, race cars, etc).

Please comment if you enjoyed this post, plan on doing this, or feature this on your own blog. I would love to see your creations as well!!

Happy proCRAFTinating!!

-Christina