A little while ago we bought some beautiful handmade soaps which came in nice boxes, which I kept. In case it hasn’t been obvious before, I’m a bit of a hoarder of useful looking things because I really like my space to be organised, but I also hate having to buy things to organise my space. I saw a post on Instagram about reusing scrap paper for taking notes or writing shopping lists which gave me the idea of an upcycle note paper box for my office. So below is a guide for the quick facelift I gave one of the soap boxes.
Step 1: Choose a box. Ideally you want something small and discreet, but you also don’t want note paper for ants. You can always get a bigger box and keep some stationery in there alongside your paper though.
Step 2: Decorate (if necessary)! Once again, I am painting mine. My bedroom and office are in the same open plan room so I’m trying to get a coherent look between them, with matching colours and styles. This would be a great project for decoupage or something similar, because it would also lend structural integrity to the box.
I didn’t paint the sides of the inner piece as I was worried it would cause friction and make it difficult to open the box later on. I have no evidence for or against this. It was just a precautionary measure.
The soap came wrapped in very pretty tissue paper which I used to add a little character. Overall, I wanted the box to be simple and plain, but I like the added interest factor the tissue paper gave it.
Step 3: Measure the box for the note paper. Luckily this box is roughly credit card sized so I just traced around my card and cut pieces from there. If you need to measure, cut your paper about 1 mm smaller on all sides so that it fits comfortably and isn’t difficult to take out. So if the box is 59 mm by 70 mm, cut the paper to 57 mm by 68 mm. You should only do this after decorating as even an extra millimetre can make the paper fit too snuggly.
Step 4: Cut up scrap paper. You could also use pretty paper if you wanted good looking note cards, but I have a ton of scrap paper and old work documents which I want to use up. I cut up about 5 pages, and there is still space for more, so don’t be shy about how much paper you cut. Any excess can be used to refill the box later.
Step 5: Assemble the pieces. I even found a stupidly small pencil in my desk which fits nicely and will allow me to avoid “please hold on while I find a pencil” moments.
One Percent Greener 