Teacher Toolbox

Make your own teacher toolbox!

Sometimes I wonder how I ever taught without Pinterest.  LOL  It has really become the "go to" place for finding ideas & inspiration!

So I kept seeing ideas for creating a "teacher toolbox" to house all of the tools teachers use on a daily basis like tacks, expos, tape, etc.  I found the perfect 22 drawer organizer at Lowes.....well perfect except for one thing--it was a boring gray color.

So I proceeded to spray paint it a bright blue.  Then I decided the blue didn't quite match my classroom decor, so I proceeded to repaint the whole thing black.  Yeah...I like my things to match. :-)  

The next step was deciding how to create labels for the outside of the box.  After considering scrapbook paper, fabric, and paint.....I finally decided on contact paper.  I had  a lot of left over colored contact paper from another project I had been working on (involving ugly white pipes on the wall of my classroom but that's another story entirely).  Colored contact paper has become my new favorite thing!  I have a feeling it is going to be making several appearances in my classroom this year.

Did you know you can PRINT on contact paper?  Well you can!  

I was using a laser jet printer and it worked great!  If you have an ink jet printer, you may want to try it out first to make sure it prints correctly.  All I did was cut out 8.5"x11" pieces of contact paper, tape them to a regular sheet of paper for stability, and run them through the printer.  YAY!

Overall I think my new desk accessory turned out pretty neat. The cool thing about this project is you can customize it to match your classroom decor or theme!  It's pretty simple and it should keep you organized all year long!