She's Crafty

Yes, I LOVE the Beastie Boys and as we speak, I am donning a T-shirt with the words "She's Crafty"  on it given to me by my best friend (the second biggest Beastie fan.)  Although, I am fairly certain that the boys did not mean that "she" was good with a glue gun, and my name is not Lucy, the song will forever be a part of the soundtrack of my life.
Being crafty sometimes means being messy (at least for me) but I am determined to change all of  that.  This year, I vowed to get my paints ducks all in a row and create a place for every little thing in my craft room/office space.  It is a huge work in progress and hopefully some time this year, I will be able to do a big happy dance reveal. But for now, in the still lingering spirit of my spring cleaning/organization kick, I will share some of my "mini" projects.
I have been seeing a lot of gift wrapping "centers" around the blogosphere.  I had always had extra paper, cards, ribbon and tissue laying around, but never really in one spot and organized.  I decided that I would put everything in an over the door organizer on the back of my office door.  Well, that was easier said than done.   Numerous trips to my local home store (which shall remain nameless since usually they are pretty good at having something that could be jerry-rigged) resulted in a major wiff out.  I had all but given up and then I spotted this at Walmart:

an ADJUSTABLE over the door organizer !!!! Genius and just $17, it doesn't get much better (at least in my sad world.)  The only problem is that since it was wire, I would have to find boxes that fit into the spaces for my gift bags and tissue paper, etc. so that it wouldn't fall through the cracks...hmmmm.... and then I had an idea!  I had just read about DIY boxes in one of my favorite blogs I Heart Organizing and decided I would try it.  I actually used the box that the organizer came in because I knew it would fit perfect depth wise: 

Unfortunately, it was a little to wide so I had to cut a little off, and I duck taped the entire open side to create a full box.  The next step was to cover it inside and out with scrap material that I already had.  It wasn't really the prettiest sight at this point. 

But then I added some ribbon:

and finally, you know those canvas closet organizers? The kind that work really great for about 5 years, and then they start to sag? Well, mine started to sag (story of my life)  and since I can't bear to throw anything away, and suspected that I might be able to repurpose the material, I had one laying around.  The piece that I used was actually the top of it that the two hangers went through to attach to the pole.  I just put a ribbon through the holes.  

Not too shabby!  And luckily I found a wicker basket at Goodwill for $1.99 that fit absolutely perfect.  I just embellished the top and the botton with some ribbon.

And the finished project: 

For details, I added Martha Stewart labels from Staples and some ribbon run through the wire.

Oh! and No! I decided not to put my rolls of wrapping paper in this organizer for many reasons, but the most important being that they would not fit.  So I bought a wastebasket at Walmart for around $4, embellished with some matching ribbon, tied up the rolls with yarn and stuck the basket close by. 

And there you have it! She's crafty.. and she's just my type........