As crafters, we love to cut stuff up, nothing is safe from the blade in my house. My favourite craft, quilting, is basically cutting up bits of fabric, into even smaller bits of fabric, and then sewing them all back together again, which seems totally logical at the time, but when you write it down like that you have to wonder if we should all really be carted away and sectioned.

I’ve been getting progressively more and more fed up with losing my scissors to the clutter of my desk and sewing table, I remember spotting somewhere online years ago that someone had repurposed a mug tree into scissor storage, so last week when I was in the Salvos and spotted a tree for 30c (the grand total of my outlay for the project!) I snapped it up straight away.

This is what I started with – I tried trading in the four year old (who was deeply involved in staring at his toes when I snapped this picture!) for some vintage perspex, but apparently the Salvos have rules against that.

The tree was a super simple design, had a nice sturdy base so I could hang everything I wanted to off it and was made from unfinished wood, meaning I wouldn’t have to do any messing around trying to cover up or remove any previous finishes. If you can’t find any mug trees in op-shops local to you, try garage sales, or even dollar stores to see if they have one that you can repurpose.

I had a bit of a play around with what I wanted to hang on there and discovered that on the sides with two branches, that the lower branches of the tree would get in the way of the scissors and rotary cutters hanging properly, so I sawed them off and sanded the stump until it was smooth and flush with the rest of the wood.

I’m still being “helped” by Declan here, I can only assume it’s the saw, he’s drawn to things that can kill and maim him.

That’s the stage that I spotted this… a heart felt message written on the bottom of the tree, from “Dawn” to her Mum. I just hacked apart someones woodwork project! Dawn, if you’re out there, I am so, so sorry… but in all fairness, your Mum did give away your handiwork to a charity shop, so I’m not soley to blame here!

I’m lacking in photos for this part – I did it at night whilst catching up on Persons Unknown, but the next stage was basically to paint the tree. I don’t tend to do much serious painting, and I’m sure proper artists are rolling their eyes when I say this, but I use the $2 paint from The Reject Shop for all my projects. I tend to grab a few new colours whenever I’m in there and have a nice little paint collection going on that I can turn to when I need to give something a fresh coat.

I used two coats of the deep purple in the middle of the picture above and decided it was just way too dark. I then added another two coats of a lighter purple, made by mixing white, the deep purple and the fluro pink to get exactly the shade I wanted. I also left Dawn’s message to her Mum uncovered to preserve that little bit of character.

Once the top coat was completely dry, I took some very fine grit sandpaper and distressed the edges, the deep purple showed through on some sections, and on other bits I worked a little harder and went straight through to the wood. I’m not normally one for distressing just for the sake of it, but the shape was so simple I thought it needed a little more dimension.

The final step was to add two generous coats of PVA, to protect the paint job and give it that little extra shine.

I added some adhesive velcro to keep my (perpetually lost!) mini craft knife handy as well. You can see the distressing a little clearer here as well.

The tree holds all of my rotary cutters, paper and fabric scissors, and my little pop out craft knife. Best thing is, when I flit between crafting in the sewing room and family room, I can just grab the tree and take it with me – no running back and forth grabbing things I forgot. Bonus points for it looking so cute!

(Psst, I added this to Domestically Speaking’s 97th Power Of Paint Party link up. Check it out for more awesome ideas for transforming every day items with just paint!)