Vintage Baby Bottle Sterilizer - Colored Pencil Organizer!

I know some people think I'm nuts because I like to organize things.  I think I've got a touch of CDO (OCD with the letters in alpha order) because there are just somethings that have to be a certain way.  I have to have my colors organized by ROY G BIV - paper, cloths, pens, etc., I have to have certain things alphabetized and there's a bunch more stuff but that's for another day...

Anyway, my oldest ds bought me the new Spectrum Noir colored pencils for Mother's Day...o.k....he doesn't know he did but he gave me some $'s and told me to buy what I wanted so I did - LOL!!  They arrived on Monday and I tell you what all of the colors in the sets were mixed up!  I know that's because each set was designed for a specific purpose but dang I opened them up and whew...drove me nuts so I knew I had to do something with em.

So, let's roll the clock back to last summer... Youngest DS, his fiance and I were at an auction that had all of this wicked cool old stuff.  In one of the boxes was a really great vintage wire baby bottle sterilizer...that still had some of the glass bottles in it!  Well, I knew I had to have it...not just because of that but they were selling in lots by that time and there was some really great junk in the lot ;)  So I bid and won ~ got the whole pile for $5.00 -  Yeah!!!  Fast forward to yesterday...I happened to think that it would be perfect to hold my pencils if I could figure out how to keep the pencils from falling out the bottom.

I worked on this last night and just finished it up a bit ago and I LOVE it!!!  It's now sittin' pretty on my shelf by my computer.

Here's what I did.  I used some foam that was from some "thing" I bought many years ago (don't throw anything good like that away - you'll need it someday!).  I had to cut it in two pieces for a couple reasons - one so it was easier to slip into the sterilizer and two because the foam I had only went a little more than half way across the organizer.    I traced the outside of the organizer on the foam then I traced along the inside as well to get my semi-circle.  Cut it out and it worked!  Bottom taken care of...

Next came the cup parts.  The wire was too low and let the pencils fall over so much I thought it would spill out easily so I dug through my packing material and came up with a few pieces of clear plastic.  I cut them to size, taped the ends together and made little circle inserts for each section.  You'll notice there are 2 that are cardboard....I ran out of packing material that was long enough so I'll be on the look out for some to replace the cardboard ones in the future.

I sorted all my pencils and it's done!

I love how nice it looks all for less than a $1.00!!!

Sure beats a 40.00 - 80.00 store bought organizer.

I have something special in store for tomorrow...

I have a way cool Steampunk Altered Trading Block project to share with you that was possible because of a great pairing of Altered Pages Design Team and the Artists on the Block blog!