Ink Pad Holder, version 1

When it gets this hot outside, it takes me a lot longer to get up the oomph to walk around the block to the recyling bin for paper and cardboard. Of course I have a huge stockpile of cereal boxes by now. I also had a bunch of Distress Ink pads stacked up in a drawer, and every time I wanted a particular color, I had to go through the stacks looking for what I wanted. Last night I got an idea, and so today I created version 1 of my new ink pad holder. The cereal boxes were already flattened. I measured halfway across the face of the box and drew a line. Same for the back.

I cut along both lines. As you can see on the left, I then taped the top and bottom of the box back together to create a long, shallow open-sided box.

I covered the outside and the bottoms of the shelves with paper, but I was too lazy to cover the sides and backs of the inside. Next time I will probably put the paper on before I close up the boxes. The other thing I will need to do (as you can probably guess) to to add another layer of cardboard between the boxes, to reinforce them. My original plan was to have stacks three ink pads high, but I don't think this version can handle that.

At least I got all of my ink pads indexed, with a small label stuck to the front showing what color it is. That alone is a huge improvement.

Good thing I still have plenty of boxes.