Tutorial: Up-Cycled Storage Crates

If you bought fruits at a fruit stand or farmer's market, you may more likely to get it in these fruit crates. Wooden crates made of wood and meant to hold good weight. Well, I thought they would be great for kitchen storage or display but let's re-decorate them a little, shall we?!...

As I have done in the past, I scanned pretty fabric for this project. I am really into Tilda designs right now, and I do have a set of quilting fabric squares so before I get to quilting with it, I scanned it for projects such as this.

On a sheet of half page labels I printed two different patterns in the aqua and pink roses. Of course on this step you can enjoy printing any pattern or style fabric you like to match your decor. In past tutorials I had offered a scan of Rachel Ashwell fabric.

I traced the outline of wood panel where originally there was pasted a fruit label and cut the traced paper, to place on my printed sheet and cut two same size stickers from the sheet. As you can see I am using two different designs on each side of the crate. You can use one pattern on both sides too. 

These crates are small and held clementines when we purchased them. They are 11"wide x 7"deep x 4"high and I have two of them. They are usually labeled on the sides so I primed the label ( as shown in this above image)  and let it dry well, so fruit labeling won't show through my design paper. I left the rest of my crates in natural wood but its also a great idea to paint them in white, if that suits your taste. Or paint in any other color for that matter.

Then I simply peeled off the stickers and attached to the sides of the crates. I rubbed the sticker on to the crate gently with a dishtowel, from one end peeling the sticker backing a little at a time to make sure there are no trapped air bubbles. 

Repeat last step on the other side of the crate and there you have it....

This is the very first crate I up-cycled as you can see, its holding baking goods. 

I love the way they turned out and hope you do too, enough that you give it a try. It is a really easy project and you gain some pretty storage cases to display anywhere in your house for a next-to-nothing price.

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Until next time...

Sonia