I’ve been hesitant to\u00a0spend ~$60 on an ink pad storage unit (yes, I had all these ink pads lying around on my craft desk for months in piles–ugh). \u00a0I mean really, with that kind of money I could buy so many more fun crafty goodies! So I finally took the time to design, measure and cut foam core to make this awesome DIY unit that I LOVE and that cost me less than $4!<\/p>\n

$\"three$ <\/a>

Vertical Pieces With 11 Half-Way Slits Being Cut (note I had to widen the slits)<\/p><\/div>\n

Here’s what you’ll need:
\n1. \u00a03 large pieces of foam core (I picked up my white at the Dollar Tree and my black at Staples)
\n2. \u00a0Ruler (a T-square ruler might simplify the measuring and a metal ruler is better for cutting along but neither is\u00a0necessary)
\n3. \u00a0Cutting blade (I used an X-Acto Knife<\/a><\/span> $\"\"$ and a new sharp X-Acto replacement blade<\/a><\/span> $\"\"$ \u00a0which made all these cuts a breeze)<\/p>\n

$\"six$ <\/a>

Horizontal Pieces With 4 Half-Way Slits Being Cut<\/p><\/div>\n

For the internal shelving structure, I cut the foam core into the following 15 pieces:<\/p>\n

1. Four verticals: 2 3\/4″ x 15″ with eleven 3\/16″-wide half-way slits that are 1 1\/4″ apart (the 1 1\/4″ gives the clearance for the 1″ high ink pads)
\n2. Eleven horizontals: 2 3\/4″ x 16″ with four 3\/16″-wide\u00a0half-way slits that are 3 3\/16″ apart (the 3 3\/16″ gives the clearance for the 3″ wide ink pads)<\/p>\n

Adjustment Options<\/span>: The 2 3\/4″ width of the pieces made the compartments shorter than the 3″ wide Distress Ink pads for which I was building this unit. \u00a0The shorter\u00a0depth of the shelves makes the ink pads easy to take in and out of the storage unit. \u00a0If you are making a storage unit for\u00a0longer\u00a0ink pads, you could adjust this width to be larger (like 3 1\/2″ for Ranger Adirondack ink pads). \u00a0The height and width of the half-way slits for spacing out the compartments would work fine for other standard ink pads if\u00a0they are more narrow than 3″ and under 1″\u00a0in height.<\/p>\n

The following is a video illustrating these cuts as well as how to assemble the horizontals and verticals together:<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nFor the outside frame verticals, I cut two pieces of foam core to 3″ x 15 1\/4″. For the outside frame horizontals, I cut two pieces of foam core to 3″ x 16 1\/2″. For the back of the unit, I cut a large piece of foam core to 16 1\/2″ x 15 1\/2″. For the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6830\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-6830\" src=\"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1-250x300.jpg\" alt=\"20151227_121244\" width=\"201\" height=\"241\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1-250x300.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1-768x923.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1-852x1024.jpg 852w, https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1-600x721.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/20151227_121244-1.jpg 972w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 201px) 100vw, 201px\" \/><\/a>wider\u00a0base to stabilize the unit, I cut a piece of foam core to 6″ x 16 1\/2″. I also cut up an old rubber mouse pad in half and adhered that down underneath the back side of the wider base to weigh down and further stabilize the unit. I filled in the front side of the base with a strip of foam core to fill in\u00a0the difference where the\u00a0cut up\u00a0mouse pad didn’t reach.\u00a0Then it was just a matter of strengthening the joints and adhering all the pieces together with hot glue.<\/p>\nThere are ready-made charts for Distress Ink Pads and other Tim Holtz products online <a href=\"http:\/\/rangerink.com\/organize-your-ranger-products\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow\">HERE<\/a><\/span>, but I wanted one that only listed the colors I have\u00a0so I\u00a0created\u00a0a\u00a0color chart in Microsoft Word\u00a0with 5 columns and 11 rows just like my storage unit so that I could use it for easy reference for all the Distress Ink Pads\u00a0(and matching Distress Markers) that I have in my collection. \u00a0If you are interested in the labels that I made for all of my ink pads, please check out my blog post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/diy-tim-holtz-distress-ink-pad-labels\/\" target=\"_blank\">HERE<\/a><\/span>\u00a0for details–I just love the free distress type font I found for those!<\/p>\nThis DIY storage unit, that was the best gift to myself this Christmas (LOL), is being entered into the <a href=\"http:\/\/lilpatchofcraftyfriends.blogspot.com.au\/2015\/12\/challenge-24.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"external\" rel=\"nofollow\">Lil Patch of Crafty Friends Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/p>\nIf you found this post helpful, please share and leave me a comment. Thanks!\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve been hesitant to\u00a0spend ~$60 on an ink pad storage unit (yes, I had all these ink pads lying around on my craft desk for months in piles–ugh). \u00a0I mean really, with that kind of money I could buy so many more fun crafty goodies! So I finally took the time to design, measure and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,13,1],"tags":[1879,1880,1878],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6813"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6841,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6813\/revisions\/6841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}