I’m on a mission to outfit my new Expedit shelf with pretty storage boxes, bins, and baskets for as little money as possible. Over the weekend I painted some inexpensive cardboard boxes with chalkboard paint to fill the bottom row of cubes. The other day I moved my giant collection of wine corks into one of the new boxes, freeing up this smaller box I’d kept them in until now. Before I tossed it into the recycling bin, I decided to try the fit of it in one of the cubes. Wouldn’t you know it was the perfect width? Sounds like a golden opportunity to make something out of nothing to me.

I decided to use this ikat-ish fabric I had leftover from upholstering the rocking chair in Jack’s nursery.

I’ve upholstered boxes before but took a different approach this time, wrapping the whole thing inside and out instead of just the edges. I started by stapling along the inside edge of the box.

And then my heart dropped into my stomach, because when I went to flip the box over to do the other side I found that I’d stapled the box to the floor! I pried it up with a flat head screwdriver and was relieved to see that the holes left by the staples were so tiny I’d probably never notice them again. See the one near my finger in the photo below?

Obviously since the staples were poking through to the outside of the box I’d have to change my approach.

Bam, hot glue strikes again.

I pulled the fabric up and over the other three sides, securing each along the top inside edge with hot glue and folding the corners as shown below.

Ta-da! But since this box is short enough that you’ll be able to see the inside quite easily I didn’t want to leave things so unfinished.

I grabbed a scrap piece of painter’s dropcloth (left over from any one of a myriad of projects, but most likely this one) and used the outside of the box as a guide to cut it to the general dimensions needed to cover the bottom and two sides.

Then I just folded over the top edge and glued, repeating on the other side as well.

And because I was being really lazy, instead of coming up with some more complicated solution I just cut another scrap of fabric to cover each of the shorter ends.

And voila. Free and pretty storage.

I love projects like this because it takes something as completely ordinary and disposable as a cardboard box and turns it into something pretty and functional. My stupid phone camera doesn’t even do the loveliness of the fabric justice. It looks like a million bucks. And you know what’s hilarious? I’d originally dumped the corks out of this box so I could throw it away, but it’s so pretty now that after snapping this picture I decided to put the corks back in it and use the chalkboard box to store some bigger and bulkier craft supplies (like some spare pillow forms and my staple gun). At this rate my corner-o-clutter will be cleared out in no time!