My Crafty Classroom Drawer Files

Now that I have finally settled in at a school from which I plan to retire, I have taken the time and exerted the energy required to turn my classroom into my home away from home. I probably spend more time in my classroom than I do in my own home, so the effort has definitely paid off. I love my classroom!

I am not the craftiest person out there, but I do love Pinterest projects as much as the next person. I even try some of the things I see pinned on the site. This is one of the projects I've seen posted by someone else that I figured I'd try. I've had these plain plastic file drawers in the garage for a couple of years, taking up space and collecting dust, so I decided to repurpose them into an organization area behind my desk in my classroom.

Here's how I did it:

Materials:
1. old (or new) plastic drawer set(s) with clear drawer fronts
2. scrapbook paper or any other kind of decorative or colorful paper you have lying around
3. printed scroll frame labels (see explanation below)
4. transparent tape
5. scrap or white paper to make a template

How It's Done:
1. Clean the drawers. Since my sets were covered in cobwebs, I used some disinfecting wipes to scrub them and prepare them for the tape.
2. Make your template. I used some white copy paper to measure, draw, and cut a template just the right size needed to cover the inside face of the clear drawers.
3. Trace and cut your drawer face backs from the decorative paper. Because I had nine drawers to cover, I picked three different patterns that matched the decor of my classroom (all three pages came from the same scrapbooking set I bought at Hobby Lobby), and I traced the template and cut three drawer backs from each patterned paper.
4. Make your labels. I did a Google search for "black scroll frames clip art" and picked one I liked. I then copied it multiple times into a Word document. I made nine copies of the image because I had nine drawers to label. Then I used text boxes to to layer the font on top of the image.
5. Glue your labels to the drawer backs. To make sure my labels were centered and in the right spot, I "eyed" the placement on one drawer before permanently gluing them down. Once I had one label glued, I simply lined up all of the other drawer backers beneath that one and lined up the labels on top of them, being careful to keep them in line with the centered sample I put together first. 6. Tape your labelled decorative drawer backing papers to the drawers. Using transparent tape, I positioned the papers inside the drawers and taped them down on all four sides.

Voila! You now have cute crafty classroom drawers!

If you choose to try this out for yourself, I'd love to see your take on the project! Please post a picture of your creation in a comment.