New Cutting Table

I have been wanting a new cutting table or a long time. For awhile I was using one of those tall, white fold-able craft tables from Jo Ann Fabrics. You know, the really wobbly ones that have wheels on the legs that you have to put a piece of folded paper or cardboard under to keep it from teetering as you cut fabric with a super sharp razor blade? Yeah. That.

Then I started using a small dining table. It was pretty ugly and way too low to the ground to be comfortable cutting for extended periods of time.

I found some bookshelves at Shopko on sale for $25 each (score!!!!). They have 3 shelves on them and are 36" high. I bought two of them, along with 12 small tupperware bins. The shelves serve as the legs for my new cutting table, and double as storage. I didn't have an idea for a table top until I brought home the shelves. I was moving things around in my room trying to make space for my new cutting table. As I was moving the old white craft table, I realized that I could just unscrew the wobbly legs from the top and just use that! It was a little too big so I took one of the fold-able sides off and it was perfect. My cutting mat fits on top with some leftover room to store my bolt of fusible fleece.

And if you were wondering what all those small plastic bins were for... COLOR CODED SCRAP STORAGE!!! This is very exciting to me because I have so many scraps. I never used them in project because it was hard to sort through a huge bin where all the colors of the rainbow were all jumbled together. So far since I have organized them, I have made 3 different projects using my scraps.

I built the shelves with the help of my 11 year old daughter. Including the time it took to sort through all of my scraps, this was a project that was about 2 hours from start to finish. It was inexpensive, saves my back from hunching over while cutting, and it looks pretty! It is so simple, I would encourage anyone who hates their current cutting space to give this a try.