Lifestyle DIY

Friday, 24 April 2015

DIY- 3 Of The Ways That I Re-use My Empty Subscription Boxes...

Hey there again,

So yesterday when I was writing about my Monthly subscription boxes I started thinking about the ways that I re-use my boxes, besides the obvious (using them to store things lol), lets face it, getting a new box every month (or 2 in my case) can soon make them pile up. So, being the crafty kind of person that I am, I figured why not make them into something fun and useful, so thats exactly what I did. Today I thought I'd share 3 of the ways that I re-cycle my boxes and how to do them yourself and 2 of the ways require little to no effort so don't worry if you aren't super crafty lol.

1. Organise your Makeup...

Okay so I thought I'd start with the easiest one of all, and that is, to put it simply use them to organise your makeup drawer. Now don't get me wrong it doesn't have to be makeup, but since I'm showing you how I use mine this is what you get lol. I personally find that the slightly bigger Glossybox boxes are really great for things like palettes, foundations and makeup wipes whereas I like to use the Birchbox boxes for my lipsticks, lip balms and mascaras.

This is a great way to keep your makeup stash super organised although I still need more boxes as not all my makeup fits, then again I need more drawers too lol.

2. Make Super Cool Photo Frames...

I am the kind of person who always has a million family photo's but never any photo frames, either that or I can never find a good amount of matching ones, well with this up-cycle you get matching frames and the best part is that they're absolutely free. The one I've put up here isn't actually fixed to the wall properly yet (I used blutac for the purposes of this picture classy huh?) as I ran out of my picture hanging strips (you'll see why in just a sec) but I have ordered some more and fully intend on using the rest of my Birchbox boxes as a trendy looking picture collage (similar to the next up-cycle). Another option is to of course simply hang the bottom of your box to the wall, add in whatever you'd like to store and place on the lid. This would be especially pretty with some of the limited edition boxes like those in my previous post from yesterday.

3. Store Your Nail Polishes...

On to the final, and in my opinion the best up-cycle yet...

For a long time I pretty much just stored all my nail varnishes in a big box which did a great job of getting them out of the way but just wasn't in any way pretty or practical, digging through a giant box for one specific colour is not my idea of fun and being the kind of person I am I had to come up with an alternative. Because I had used the bottom parts of my Glossybox boxes to organise my makeup I had a rather large collection of seemingly useless box lids, and so I figured why not make myself some nifty little nail polish shelves using the lids and a few spare pieces of cardboard and voila this is what I came up with. Now all my polishes are within reach, I can see the colours easily and to top it off they look fab too!! (PS I added the picture frame on one of the pictures so that you can see how it would look in a set)

I loved the end result so much that I figured why not show you step by step how I did it so that you can try it out yourself so keep reading folks the DIY is on it's way!

DIY Nail Polish Shelves...

Okay so you are going to need: 

1. Your Glossy box lid (or whichever lid you are using)

2. A glue gun (for my more crafty readers), some very sturdy sticky tape or whatever glue you think will hold well

3. A stanley knife or scissors

4. A ruler or tape measure

5. The box that your Glossybox arrived in or some nice sturdy cardboard.

Okay so first what you need to do is measure your box lid width ways across, mine was 27.5 cm or 10.5 inches (make sure to also measure slightly up the sides so that you have a good amount of cardboard to attach to the lid.

Next measure and cut a piece of cardboard using the measurement you have just taken and making it around 1.5 inches wide. 

 Next check that your piece of cardboard fits into your lid, with the sides bent upwards.

Providing your piece fits, you can then use this piece as a template for any other lids that you will be using.

I made 3 shelves and so cut out 3 pieces of cardboard of equal length and with.

Before doing anything else at this point you could colour in the back of your pieces of cardboard, you could use paint or you could be lazy like me and just use a black sharpie, either will work. Because you couldn't see as well after I'd coloured them black I left one white until after I had finished adding in the shelf part.

 Once you're sure that everything fits it's time to get sticking, apply a good amount of glue or tape to the flaps you made and attach those to the inside of the box (I stuck my pieces of cardboard in pattern side up)

Next cut a small piece of cardboard around 2-3 inches wide and slightly longer than your newly added shelf

Create a kind of a hinge and secure it partially to the back of the box and partially to the shelf, this is going to add stability to your shelves so that they won't buckle under the weight of your polishes.

 And thats it you're done, easy wasn't it?

All you need to do now is put your newly made shelves up on the wall in whatever arrangement works for you and add your polishes. I used some damage free wall hanging strips from command but you can of course use anything that works for you.
On a side note I also made the hairband/hairclip hanger you see in the picture and all my own hair accessories so if you'd like a tutorial on those let me know and I will happily oblige. Its amazing really how easy it can be to create something new out of something you might have thrown away.



Anyway folks on that awesome DIY it's time for me to call it a night. As always thank you for stopping by and I hope you come back again soon, I know I will lol ;)

Alice xoxo