Wooden Cassette Rack Altered for Craft Storage

Years ago I found one of those Napa Valley Wooden Cassette racks and have been using it for my stamp pads and I still love having my pads stored in this manner. A few months ago BFF Carmen was visiting and we went to a thrift store and there were two of the racks for $3 each and I grabbed one and Carmen told me I should get the other one as well for that price so I did. I knew I didn't have enough stamp pads to fill up either rack but ya never know what might happen!

I had to do a little rearranging on my wall to get the racks to fit but that wasn't a big issue. I did have some Stampin Up ink pads in a Stampin Up carousal storage and thought I would get all my ink pads together and it looks so nice now! I then had to decide what to do with the other rack and I wondered about storing my ink refill bottles in it so it would free up one of my drawers. I was really pleased with how the altered wooden cassette rack turned out!

And here is the result!

The thin backing of the rack was put on with staples and it was fairly easy to get the backing off using a small standard screw driver and prying up gently to loosen the back so I could get it off. You can see in the picture where the little staples hold the back on to the frame.

In order for the ink re-fillers not to just fall through I needed to have two slats as a "shelf" and to accomplish this I used my miter box and miter saw to make the notches on the opposite side of the vertical slats to line  up with notches on the back. I found it easier to cut several at a time and it helped with the wood not splintering quite as much and using a little painters tape held the slats together well. I used one vertical slat as a guide so I would know how deep to cut my notches and then put a line of painters tape across the slat to use as a guide.

Here you can see the notches that are made in the vertical slats and then the notches I made. Before I started cutting I did lay bottles down and count the notches so I would know where to cut. 

This shows the slight gaps between the slats a little better. Now I have to tell you after I took this picture and put the thing back together I realized it would look better if I had the solid edge of the vertical slats toward the front instead of having all the little notches toward the front so I had to take the back off and turn them all around and I'm glad I did because it for sure has a much nicer finished look.

I just used some small nails to attach the back to the frame as I have no idea where my staple gun is and not even sure if a regular staple gun would have worked. 

Here is the finished product before I hung it up and put it on the wall. As you can see there are different size slots because I wanted my Glimmer Mists to be stored in the rack as well. 

This picture shows all three of my racks on the wall and I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

If you ever run across any of the Napa Valley Cassette Racks and wonder what you can do with them you now have another idea of how to incorporate it for storage in your craftroom. 

Coral Dream Catcher Tumbler

My daughter wanted me to make a tumbler for her and one of her favorite colors is coral, that's a really hot color these days. The only problem was that I didn't have any coral glitter and hadn't seen the color at Hobby Lobby or Walmart so my resourceful self set out to make my own coral glitter!

I mixed up some Buttercup Yellow glitter from Hobby Lobby and then some Cherry Blossom from Walmart and added a little white glitter in the mix. I just kept adding the colors and mixing until I got a color I liked. The picture really makes it seem more like orange but in person it's a coral color. 

Once my daughter told me she wanted a dream catcher on the tumbler I had to find something that I thought would match up nicely and I found the quote of "let your dreams be bigger than your fears" and it worked out great! I used Cricut Printable Vinyl and the print then cut feature with the Cricut Maker. It was my first time ever using printable vinyl and I really liked how it turned out. For the words I used regular vinyl and there were a few little bumps in the lettering but my daughter won't mind and if she does then she can put the dang thing where the...well, we will just say she will like it!

I'll be doing another one of these soon and used Water Slide Paper for the next one and found that was a lot easier to work with than using regular vinyl. I'll post it when I finish it up...hopefully within the next six months or so! HA HA HA