Cloth Bins Labeling {Tutorial}

Okay, so I have some cube like shelves in the play room at my house, and in those shelves live cloth like bins or boxes, whatever you want to call them, and in those bins there are supposed to be toys. My children do not understand, or better yet, they pretend not to understand the concept of cleaning up, and putting their toys away; but that is another post. I have tried and failed to label these bins to encourage and help my kids with the tedious and never ending task of keeping a clean play room. The first time I did this, I thought I was a genius! I labeled the bins, and for a month or so til the labels started to fall off, the boys did rather well at keeping the toys picked up, and put away; but as soon as those labels were gone, so was my children's temporary OCD.

Here is my first attempt:

Before

After

I made up some labels using clip art and words, printed them out, cut them, and taped them to the bins using packing/shipping tape. Like I said I *thought* I was a genius...sadly I was wrong.

The playroom again became a mad house, and it was a constant daily struggle to keep the toys contained! At one point we even removed 80% of the toys as a punishment (this did not work). Then I actually did come up with a genius idea! I remembered that the one, and only time the boys were actually able to, and liked, to keep the playroom clean was when we had the bins labeled, but I knew that I couldn't again do the paper taped on labels. Then it hit me, as I was looking at them one day...Fabric Paint! I already had an abundance of fabric pens and "puffy" fabric paint from my cousins baby shower you can read about that on my sister blog HERE, and I already had the bins, so I got to work, and I am tickled with the result!

Before

 (plain old cloth bin)

Get those supplies!!

Get Creative!!

After!!

I just love them! I free hand drew them, but I could also see using a stencil. I did smear a couple times so be careful, and use the pens (if you choose to use pens) to draw first, and then go over with puffy paint. I also used the bins I had already, and yes some of them were dirty, in a perfect world I would have bought all new ones to do this to, but I was spontaneous (and my kids would have got the new ones dirty I'm sure). I am very happy with how these turned out and all the kids love them! 

What do you think? How do you label things?