Rainbow Storage Box - Thrift Store Crafts

If you are like me, you get your best DIY ideas at the thrift stores! Today's rainbow acrylic paint organizer is one of the best storage ideas for crafts I have had in a long time!

Thrift Store Crafts - Rainbow Storage Box

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Thrift Store Finds

One of my best things at finding at the thrift store is cool old trays. I think this is because I spend lots of time dinking around in the office area, but I never question getting them because they are so handy to have in my craft room!

For the longest time I have use this one laying down with ephemera and “stuff” in it…

Thrift store finds - craft room storage tray before painting.

It was pretty functional, but then I thought, what if I set it up for vertical storage? BINGO! I had a new acrylic paint storage unit!

How To Make A Craft Room Storage Box

The first step in any project like this is to give the box a good cleaning! I like to use a natural cleaner that I get from Grove, but you can use anything that will not leave a residue (DO NOT use orange cleaner as it will leave a film on your piece that the paint won't stick to!)

Next I painted the whole thing with chalk paint. You can use any brand!

The reason I love it is that you don't have to prep the piece beyond giving it a good clean. You can use chalk paint right over varnish as a base coat for your paint.

Thrift store box with chalk paint base coat.

I picked out the colors of acrylic paint I was going to use in all the different “sections” of the tray.

For this one I thought it would be fun to do a rainbow of colors! This would also give me the chance to sort my acrylic paints in the rainbow colors (I might do this same kind of thing for my lace … hmmm got me thinking now!)

Use an acrylic paint pen to clean up any of the messes in the paint.

While I try to be careful while I am painting, the nice thing about a project like this is that you can use a white acrylic paint pen to clean up any messes.

I used the Montana white pen for this project and it went over the bright colors with just one coat… I was super impressed!

Last but not least was to get it set up! I decided that setting it vertically on one of my decorative boxes would work best for my office!