Revolving Storage Bins for Your Polymer Clay Studio
Video #737: How to use less than 1 sq ft of studio space, to store over 4 sq ft of inks, finishes, paints, glues, stamps & more!
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IN THIS POST: — revolving bins — studio storage ideas — craft room — inks — stamps — paints — glues — finishes — harbour freight — tim holz — storage bins — metal trays — (Topics marked with an asterick* are discussed in the Comments Section below).
In today’s video I am going to show you how I use revolving bins for craft storage in my polymer clay studio.
I have been getting several request from viewers as to what the black storage unit on my desk was, so I thought I’d show it to you in more detail.
This style of revolving bin storage has been around a long time. In fact when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in the small town of Rocky Mountain House Alberta, and they owned the only gas station and service garage in the community. My grandpa had a huge version of one of these revolving bins in his shop. It was probably 2 feet round and maybe 5 feet high, made of galvanized steel and filled with various automotive parts. I remember turning the bins so I could see what was inside.
I kind of have a nostalgic feeling toward this kind of storage unit. So when I saw that Tim Holtz had just come out with a supply spinner in this vintage style, for storing inks, tools and paints in, I really wanted to have one.
Though they are extremely cool looking, the Tim Holtz version is fairly pricey… especially if you want one shipped to Canada. So I set it on the back burner, to maybe get one down the road.
Then this past Christmas I was shopping for tools on the Harbor Freight website, and found a much more affordable four tier unit.
It took me about an hour to assemble because there were a million nuts and bolts to screw together.
I find that the unit can hold a lot of weight, and the trays spin very smoothly, but the base seems a little thin which causes the whole thing to rock a bit when loaded down with a lot of supplies.
As you will see in the video, I have stored absolutely tons of bottles of glue, ink, paint, finishes, stamps and more. The unit only takes up One square foot of desktop space but gives almost 4 square feet of storage.
I like the black industrial look, but I have seen others who have painted their revolving storage bins with great success. Overall I found the quality to be good, especially considering the price, and will buy another unit in the future, if needed.
00:00:07 –> 00:00:12 I’m going to show you how I use revolving bins for craft storage
00:00:12 –> 00:00:18 Now I’ve been getting some questions about this storage unit that I have back here
00:00:18 –> 00:00:24 and so I thought I would show it to you today. And this style of bin has been around for
00:00:24 –> 00:00:30 a really long time. I remember when I was a little girl, my grandparents
00:00:30 –> 00:00:38 lived in a really tiny little town in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, which is quite a ways from here, and kind of
00:00:38 –> 00:00:43 an isolated little town. And my grandparents had, or my grandpa, had
00:00:43 –> 00:00:50 a garage, or a like a gas station with automotive service thing
00:00:50 –> 00:00:57 and in the corner, he had a great big one of these units. It was really huge, it was probably
00:00:57 –> 00:01:02 two feet round, maybe galvanized steel and out
00:01:02 –> 00:01:08 There were several layers of them. You could rotate the bins and they had spark plugs and nuts and bolts
00:01:08 –> 00:01:14 and air filters and stuff you need for a gas station or garage.
00:01:14 –> 00:01:22 So I’ve been familiar with this style of thing having it in a garage or whatever, and then a little while ago
00:01:22 –> 00:01:28 Tim Holtz came out with a new unit, I’ll show you a picture of it here. It’s called
00:01:28 –> 00:01:34 a supply spinner and he put his alcohol inks and different things in it. And I fell in love with it
00:01:34 –> 00:01:41 It just brought back all those memories of being a kid at grandpa’s garage. But it has one unit
00:01:41 –> 00:01:47 one layer and it is about 14 inches wide so it is a little bigger than this other unit
00:01:47 –> 00:01:53 but for me it’s kind of expensive. It’s $49 and then there was an extra $25 shipping if you
00:01:53 –> 00:01:59 shipping to Canada. So I kinda just set it on the back burner as something that I would like.
00:01:59 –> 00:02:09 And then… then this Christmas time, I started shopping around. I was at
00:02:09 –> 00:02:13 Harbor Freight Tools and I was looking for some other tools
00:02:13 –> 00:02:18 and I came across this unit here. And in fact, right now, it’s on sale
00:02:18 –> 00:02:26 for under $20 and when I saw that, I thought OK I have to have that so I ordered it
00:02:26 –> 00:02:32 and it came in a box that was about the size of this and a little bit thicker
00:02:32 –> 00:02:39 but you had to put the whole thing together and here’s the instructions here. It was quite neat
00:02:39 –> 00:02:45 it’s not super hard to put together or anything but it came with a gazillion bolts
00:02:45 –> 00:02:50 72 bolts and washers and 72 nuts so there’s a fair amount of
00:02:50 –> 00:02:58 bolting it all together, but it’s quite simply designed. Now, it is about a foot across, 12 inches across
00:02:58 –> 00:03:03 and there’s 4 layers. It’s got ball bearings and things in the layers
00:03:03 –> 00:03:10 and you can get tons of stuff in it. Now I kind of have it overloaded, so it seems a little
00:03:10 –> 00:03:17 wobbly though it feels very strong. It seems like the wobble’s just coming from the bottom
00:03:17 –> 00:03:23 because it’s kind of a domed bottom here. So overall, it seems like you could wiggle a lot
00:03:23 –> 00:03:32 but when you’re turning the layers down low… it seems to be strong, by the way. That’s what I’m trying to get at.
00:03:32 –> 00:03:37 I’ve got absolutely tons of stuff in here and it’s easy to get at.
00:03:37 –> 00:03:45 I’ve got mostly just my paints and glues and inks. So in the top part here, I have
00:03:45 –> 00:03:50 all my paints and glues, liquid polymer clays and different things like that in here
00:03:50 –> 00:03:57 and then in this layer here, I’ve got alcohol inks, I’ve got all my pinata inks. I’ve got a bunch of those I’ve got
00:03:57 –> 00:04:05 to show you yet. I got a bunch of new colors and stuff, some different inks and distress stains and stuff.
00:04:05 –> 00:04:11 Here, this is the only kind of departure from the rest of the stuff. I’ve got some
00:04:11 –> 00:04:15 planner stamps here because I use them everyday and I want it somewhere close by that I could put them
00:04:15 –> 00:04:24 and use them easily. So I’ve got all my planner stamps here and some ink pads. And then some jewelry glazes
00:04:24 –> 00:04:28 different things like Guilder’s paste.
00:04:28 –> 00:04:36 And then here I’ve got my block printing inks, my Lumiere Paints. There’s a lot in here.
00:04:36 –> 00:04:43 These things come in different sections. You can put them in whatever order you want, but there’s two
00:04:43 –> 00:04:49 racks that have four sections and two racks have six sections. So this one here is the
00:04:49 –> 00:04:56 four section one, and then this one here is the six sections. And I’ll just pop these out of here
00:04:56 –> 00:05:03 so you can see. These are the heavy jars of screen printing ink I’ve got in here. I got quite a few.
00:05:03 –> 00:05:09 I’ve got about five of them in there. I’ll probably could fit one more. But the way it’s structured is it comes with
00:05:09 –> 00:05:15 all these different pieces, you bolt them together and I don’t know if Doug will be able to see in here that well
00:05:15 –> 00:05:21 but in the back there you can see where the bolts are and you just have to kind of use
00:05:21 –> 00:05:28 a screw driver to put the bolt, the washer, and the nut underneath. Then the whole thing is stacked
00:05:28 –> 00:05:35 on a pole that has these little ball bearings and things. It works beautifully
00:05:35 –> 00:05:42 So I really like this kind of industrial look. It brings back a lot of memories. Also, my kind of style is a little
00:05:42 –> 00:05:49 bit of masculine, industrial kind of thing with a little feminine added on top.
00:05:49 –> 00:05:54 So I quite like it in this black version, but I’ve seen on YouTube and stuff,
00:05:54 –> 00:05:58 where people have painted them out, and they’ve painted them white or whatever they wanted to
00:05:58 –> 00:06:04 or giving them kind of a Shabby Chic, or a colored look to it or something like that. So you could do that.
00:06:04 –> 00:06:09 But as you can see, they’re really inexpensive. If you pick them up in a place like Harbor Freight.
00:06:09 –> 00:06:14 But it will take you a while to put it together. It took me about an hour, and I had to make sure I didn’t lose
00:06:14 –> 00:06:19 any of the bolts and that kind of thing, but it was fun. Alright, so that should answer the question for all of you
00:06:19 –> 00:06:27 who are wondering what that thing was in the corner. It only uses one square foot of space but it gets four
00:06:27 –> 00:06:31 square feet of storage so it’s good for the space.
00:06:31 –> 00:06:38 Anyways, so I hope you like that and if you did, do let us know if you like this video. If you have seen something
00:06:38 –> 00:06:44 on my desk that you would like me to describe or explain to you, go ahead and make a suggestion
00:06:44 –> 00:06:50 in the comment section below. Also, if you have tips, techniques, products, books, anything that you would
00:06:50 –> 00:06:59 like me to go further into and you haven’t found a video that we haven’t done one yet, on that subject
00:06:59 –> 00:07:06 then make sure that you’ll leave your suggestions as well. Alright, so we’ll see you next time and bye for now.
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Resource Links:
- Amazon: 12 in. Four Tray Revolving Storage **
- Related Video: Storing Craft Supplies in Acrylic Cosmetic Organizer
- Related Video: Polymer Clay Storage In Plastic Drawer Cabinets
- Related Video: How I Organize By Zones in My Polymer Clay Studio
- Related Video: Jewelry Tool Storage Using Inexpensive Metal Buckets
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Hi Cindy
After the review you gave I went straight to Freight Harbor and they are not shipping to Canada! Did they ship it to you as a special order or how did you get around it? I am so sad that I can’t get this :'(
Hi Karen, sorry about that. I had it shipped to an US postal box. You can also get them on Amazon. You should be able to get them shipped through them. The link is right under the video if you need it.
Hi Cindy
Not sure that you got my message about the carousel… I did rewatch the test lab … It gave some good ideas of what to place on it. are pinata inks the same as alcohol inks… Plus I used a 20% coupo. So it cost only $16
That’s great Natalie! Yes Pinata inks are actually alcohol inks. They are made by Jacquard. The other ones you have seen me use are called Adirondack Alcohol Inks. They are made by Ranger. They are quite similar products and are used exactly the same way.
Cindy, You need to buy a bunch of these, stop them with you logo and resell them for half of what Tim Holtz charges. !!!! Do you get free shipping through Amazon Prime in Canada? I imagine your friend did not realize the shipping was going to be $12.00 until it was already weighed at the post office. OUCH.
That is a decent idea Anna! Who knows, down the road we might be able to do things like that… but for now we need to focus on getting the website done. Yes we can get free shipping in Amazon Prime in Canada, but Amazon.ca doesn’t have the selection that Amazon.com does, plus everything is usually way higher… even if you factor in the exchange rate. We are just a smaller country, so things are always more expensive for us. Perhaps one day there won’t be as big a difference, but for now there is.
I have struggled over whether to purchase a couple of these or not. I would love to re-vamp my whole craft area as it has gotten so full every single area is covered. So the question is do I go UP in storage or continue to cram stuff in plastic drawer units? I will probably pay Harbor Freight a visit since we have a large store here in town but even if I had them shipped, the freight charges are very minimal. They only charge $6.00 anywhere in the USA and thats for 2 units! Thanks Cindy, I think you might have just tipped the scales!
You’re welcome Dixie Ann! You guys are so lucky too have such good rates for shipping. My friend and I just walked down to the post office to mail her Mom’s phone charger back to her. (Her mom had come for a visit and forgotten it behind.) Anyway, it cost her $12 to send it about a 3 hours drive from here, within our own Province! It was a tiny box around 3″x2″x1″ and must have weighed practically nothing… and it was $12!! I recently mailed a pair of earring to the US and it cost $16. Geez! And you get to have two relatively heavy boxes shipped for $6. It feels very unfair. We don’t even have it near as bad as folks in Europe or Australia. With taxes and shipping and such, they can easily be charged 3 times what we get charged. So you are very fortunate indeed! *end of rant* LOL
Some folks don’t understand what a good thing they have here in the states and constantly complain about the shipping costs in the USA. Our shipping rates have increased again this spring but with the one box ships all anywhere stateside it’s still pretty reasonable. They need more open trade rules and cheaper rates to ship anywhere in the world, especially between neighboring countries. It boils down to the same old adage “the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence” sometimes it is, sometimes it is not! I feel your pain…..
Hi Cindy, I love your site and just worked out you are Canadian not American, LOL. I am sorry but to the Australian ear. it is hard to tell the difference. But i think you guys still have it lucky for shipping rates compared to us. For the same thing here we have to pay over $14. and our mail service has decided even regular mail will now take up to 1 week unless we pay for express post, and this is regular letters we are talking about here, which used to be next day delivery. Parcels can take nearly 2 weeks to ship it with our own country. I think the pony express could have taught them a thing or 2. But the USA is so lucky with there in country postage rates, but I just can’t afford the postage if I want to buy something from there. And they have access to everything they ever want to buy, not like us here in OZ.
Yeah I have heard that shipping is pretty bad in Australia. I feel for you. I get it why it would be expensive to ship something. I mean, I wouldn’t be willing to take a package 3 hours away for only $12… but it sure does elevate the price of something, when the shipping is so high. They definitely have it good in the states when it comes to shipping.
Roni, I think carrier pigeons would be faster than Australia Post. I live out west and it takes forever to get a parcel sent from the east. Not to mention the flamin’ cost! I am not prepared to pay for Express Post. I can wait :-)
Chrissie
The Left Coast
I really enjoyed this storage suggestion. It looks rugged, practical, and affordable. And, being at Harbor Freight, sounds like something my husband might enjoy buying for an anniversary present this week!
Happy Anniversary Lynn! Maybe he can assemble it and put some chocolates in the bins for you too? That would be fun! :)