Hand Towel Bag Dispenser

I'm a big fan of reusable grocery bags.  They make my life easier.  But I some times forget to bring them into the store with me, so we do end up with plastic bags.  I use them as liners for our trashcans and in lieu of fancy diaper pails.  So I need a place to keep them organized and at hand.  For about $3, I turned an ordinary dish towel into a nice little bag for my bags.

This one hangs in our garage, right outside the kitchen door and I made a second one for in the baby's room.

To make one, all you need is:
A dish towel

Skinny elastic

Small safety pin

Hot glue gun and glue

Cut two lengths of elastic just a few inches longer than the ends of the towel.  Take one of the pieces of elastic and the safety pin and pin it to one end.

Using the tube created by the hem at the end of the towel (it should be open all the way across, so look for that when picking out your towel) thread the elastic through, safety pin end first, using the pin to pull it through.  Make sure you hold on to the other end while you do this.

Grab the two ends of the elastic and pull tight

Until it's a tight as you can get, forming a circle.

Like so.  Tie the ends of the elastic together in a knot and trim off extra.

Repeat on the other end.  Keep the opening at this end a little looser when you tie it closed.

Your towel should look something like this now.  Flip it inside out and line up the outside edges.

Using your hot glue gun, draw a line of glue, a little bit at a time, down one of the edges and glue the other to it.

Turn it right-side out

It should look something like this-a tube with holes at either end.

I added a small loop of ribbon to the loose end to hang it with.  Just tie a piece of ribbon or twine or whatever you choose around the elastic, knotting it at one end.

Hang and fill with bags from the top (where your hanging loop is)

Pull the bags out through the opening at the bottom.  And there you have it-a cheap, easy and quick way to store those plastic bags you've got laying around.

{Handmade Goodie of the Week} Hoop Hair Bow Holder

Today I'm sharing a little project that I made for Korra's room.  She has a lot of flowers and bows that clip onto her interchangeable headband that I made her as well as some bigger headbands, so I made her a little organizer.  The nice thing is it's not too baby-ish, so she'll be able to use it as she gets older.

The very best part about this project?  It was completely free!  I had all of the materials already on hand!  Always awesome when you can use what you've already got!  The hoop and the ribbon were left over from the chandelier I made for her nursery, the wooden dowel was left over from another project and the spray paint I already had.

To make yours, you'll need:

One large embroidery hoop-you'll only need one of the circles

Wooden dowel

Coordinating ribbon and spray paint

Hot glue gun and glue

First, spray paint your hoop, making sure to get all of the sides

and the wooden dowel.  This is my trick for rounded things like this-stick them in the dirt, just far enough in to hold the item up and spray paint.  Once it's completely dry, stick in the painted end and paint the other end that was previously in the dirt.  You get all of the sides at once with less dry time to wait on.

Once your hoop and dowel are painted and dry, it's time to start adding the ribbon.

The spacing of the ribbon is completely up to you.  I started with one in the middle of the hoop and spaced them from there.  I recommend not cutting your ribbon until you've decided where you want it and have glued down either end, as shown above.  That way you don't have to worry about your ribbon not being the right length.

Repeat until you're satisfied with the number of strands.

As you can see, I spaced some of them a little farther apart that others.  Some of her flowers and bows are bigger than others, so I wanted to have room for those without it looking crowded.

Once you've finished gluing your ribbon to your hoop, it's time to add the dowel.  For this step, I laid my finished hoop on the floor and laid my dowel under it, spacing how I'd like it to hang.  The dowel is going to hang from two loops of ribbon attached to the hoop, which we'll tackle in the next step. 

  Figure out where you want the loops to attach to the hoop and measure from there and double.  Attach to the hoop with some hot glue.  {You can skip the dowel if you wish-totally up to you!}

Add clips to the ribbons and hang the headbands from the dowel.

I love it because now I have a visual of what she has and what goes with what she has on.

And the dowel slides easily in and out of the loops so her headbands hang all nicely and are easy to get at.

Super easy and FREE!

{Who's That} She Wears Flowers

I'm blog swapping with the lovely Tammy from She Wears Flowers today.  She's here sharing a great organizing project.  Take it away, Tammy!

I’m so thrilled to be swapping blogs with Scraps and Scribbles today! I remember when I first discovered her blog and I couldn’t stop reading! She does so many fun things!

I’m Tammy from She Wears Flowers where I blog in the hopes that I can inspire others the same way I am inspired when I read craft blogs. I love to sew, wield the glue gun and spread on the Mod Podge. I am pretty willing to go with whatever crafty idea pops into my head. Most of my projects have tutorials and I tend to stick with quick, easy and very satisfying projects. I hope you’ll stop by and see what I’m up to!

Today’s project is super simple and has been fabulous for my kitchen! I have a really small kitchen—really small—so space is at a premium. Unfortunately, I probably don’t use it very well. I can’t reach the stuff in the little cupboards above my fridge so this is where I shove the stuff that I don’t use often—like cookie cutters and decorating supplies.  And by shove, I mean shove. (So embarrassing!)

I decided to do something about my mess and I started with all of those cookie cutters. I have a lot (Notice I didn’t show the other side of that cupboard? Much worse than this one!) so I thought I’d share how I organized them and made it easy to find one when I need it.

Materials

(I always seem to start with all of my materials, take a picture, then add more later—sorry!)

cookie cutters

binder

paper

plastic sleeves for binder

binder dividers with tabs

marker

cardstock

cover for binder (printable in instructions)

containers for cookie cutters

vinyl labels or regular labels

Instructions

Sort your cookie cutters into piles and decide what labels you will need. Since I used plastic shoe box sized containers, I wanted each pile to fit in that size box. This helped determine my groups.

Label your tabs for the dividers.

I put my dividers in alphabetical order in my binder. This helps when I am looking for something if the binder gets really full.

Trace each cookie cutter onto paper. (This is a great job for older children!) I only used one side of each paper and didn’t worry if I had some pages with big spaces. That way, I have plenty of room to add more as I buy them.

Insert each page, back to back, in the clear sleeves and put into binder in the right section.

You can flip through easily to see if you have a certain cookie cutter or to decide what you want to use for a project. The sections will coordinate with your containers so you will be able to find your cutter easily. Now I can quickly figure out if the frog is in my animal box or my fairy tale box without having to climb on a chair to pull them all down—I just check the binder first!

This also comes in really handy when you are using a different shape to make something. (Like hearts for ladybugs, for instance.)

Make a cover for your binder and then store it with your other kitchen books.

You can print this cover for personal use. Click the picture below to enlarge it and then print.

(You may want to copy the jpeg file into another program so you can change the size to make it work. I can’t figure out how to get it to print the right size. This file was made as an 8.5 x 11 inch size, but it tends to change by the time it is printed.)

You can also try HERE for a pdf version.

Label your box so it is easily identifiable. I labeled mine on one end and the top.

There you go—done!

Your cookie cutters are separated into groups in containers that are easily accessible and a binder with all of the information also easily accessible. Here’s to hoping that when I get on the chair to reach above the fridge for something, I will actually be able to find it quickly!

Not the most exciting project, but so exciting to have these cookie cutters organized and the cabinet clutter tamed for a while!

Thanks for swapping blogs Courtney!

I hope to see lots of you at my blog soon!

Thanks so much for coming by today Tammy!  I hope you all check out Tammy's amazing blog!

{Hand-made Goodie of the Week} Mod Podged Magazine Files

In case you weren't able to make it over to It's A Hodgepodge Life last week to see my guest post, I didn't want you to feel left out.  Here's what I shared with Gay's lovely readers:

Today I've got something to help get you organized.  We recently bought our first house (yay!) and I wanted to start things off clean and organized.

Our magazines needed a home-they were previously living in a cardboard box in our spare room, and never being used (which is why we saved them!)  I found a set of 5 plain magazine files at IKEA for only $1.99!  But I wanted to jazz them up a bit.

Ta-da!

Hand-made Goodie of the Week: Picture Frame Earring Organizer

In case you weren't able to make it over to Women Who Do It All to see my guest post, here's what you missed:

 I don't know if you have the same problem I do with your earrings, but I can't seem to find an organization system that works.  First, there was this:

Then I moved on to this:

It worked for a little bit but my earrings kept falling off.  And there just wasn't enough space.  So I started thinking, what else could work?  I needed something that would work for my bigger earrings and my hoops, which the french memo board didn't accommodate very well.  Here's what I came up with:

Picture Frame Earring Organizer

To make yours, you'll need:

A picture frame

Paint and brush

Ribbon

Hot glue gun

Sandpaper

I got this frame at the Goodwill outlet for like 50 cents!  

Took it apart

And painted it a lovely shade of peacock teal.  

Once the teal was dry, I spray painted the whole thing black.

When the black paint had dried, I lightly sandpapered the frame so that the teal would peak through.

Like so.

Taking the ribbon, cut 9 pieces the same length as the width of your frame.  This will make 3 braids.  If you want more than 3, go for it!  It's really up to you!

Loosely braid three pieces together.  

Then hot glue the three braided pieces onto the back of the frame.  Space them however you'd like.  Some of my spaces were bigger for my longer earrings.

And volia!!  A customizable organizer for your lovelies.  And on the cheap!

This one is currently for sale in my Etsy shop, so if you love it, go get it before it's gone!