Working Tidy

Hello, Natalie here.

In the Feb 08 Issue of Creating Keepsakes, Becky Higgins office is in the ‘how we create’ section, titled “begin with the end”. On page 54 you can see where Becky has a hole in her desk, under which lives her garbage! She just slides her scrappy trimmings to the hole, and –bye bye…scraps land in the bin!

I love the idea of keeping my work surface clean as I work. Heck, anything that helps me be clean I love! I recently built myself a large L shaped desk, and in the corner section that I designed to scrap in, I drilled my garbage hole!

(this photo is poor, taken just now with the sun on this side of the house. You can see I've got a tall bin under there.)

I used a 4” circular bit in my drill to cut a hole in the door. (I used doors for the desk top. Click on my name to go to my blog if you want to read more about the construction of my desk.)

Now, remember these doors are hollow, so I also cut the hole in a piece of mdf that was the same thickness as the hollow space in the door.


Cardboard is the only filler between hollow core dores, so I moved the pieces in my way, dry fit the piece of wood, and took it out again. I put glue in the hollow door and onto the wood, slid it into place, and clamped it down. I also used masking tape to make sure it stuck and stayed right where I wanted it.

When the glue was dry, I removed the clapms and tape and proceded to finish my desk by painting and varnishing it.

On my new desk, where I make jewelry, I don't need a large garbage can because scraps from jewelry making are so small. So my solution here is to just put a cute bowl on my desk top to act as garbage can, and this I just empty on occasion. ;)

(Look at that cute metal bowl on the right of my red bowl. I should have included it better in the photo here. I use it to keep my jewelry tools in, and because of all of the circles, I can hang earrings on it as I make them. he he.)

TFL!