By Julie White

I find vintage tins at arc thrift stores all the time, and I buy them…all the time. They’re typically $.99 to $1.99 depending on the size and I use them to store everything from safety pins to spices. I have a lot of art supplies that I wanted to organize and figured that using these beautiful tins would be a great way to do it.

I used one large tin, one that was slightly smaller and then a tiny one for the top.

In order to make the tins tiered and to increase my storage capacity, I bought two brass candlesticks from arc at $.99 and $1.99. One was heavy, so I used that for the bottom tier to help make it steady and the other lighter one I used for the second tier.

Then I used special metal-on-metal glue to make sure the candlesticks and the tiers were going to hold together. (This glue was intense-I definitely needed ventilation, just fyi if you use it.)

I didn’t worry too much about being neat and clean when I was gluing on the bottom of the tins, I was more concerned about everything being glued securely. I tried to be neater when I glued to the inside of the tins but kept in mind that even these spots would be covered by the materials inside.

I started by gluing the heavy candlestick inside the largest/bottom tin, and then lighter candlestick onto the bottom of the smallest/lighter candlestick. Once these sat for 24 hours I glued in the middle tin/tier and let that sit for a whole day as well.

Looking at the final product I wish I had used a slightly smaller tin for the medium tier. However, I love how much stuff I can store inside! I got so many art supplies (many from arc, including all of my sharpies!) into one organized spot. Overall, this was a quick and easy organization project that cost approximately $7 before tax at arc. You can’t beat that.