I have this per­son­al phi­los­o­phy. I refuse to make Dol­lar Tree DIYs that I would not per­son­al­ly use in my home. This Dol­lar Tree DIY Vin­tage Card Cat­a­log checks that box for sure! It is hands-down one of the cutest dol­lar store makeovers I have done to date! In my opin­ion anyways.

You will be blown away at how easy this Dol­lar Tree DIY was and if you are a vin­tage lover like myself, this will scratch your itch. It all start­ed with these cute lit­tle wood box­es I found in the craft sec­tion. They had some gener­ic shapes cut into the front of what I con­sid­er the “draw­er” and I knew it could be removed (and hope­ful­ly) insert­ed backwards.

So I did what any DIY, wood project, Dol­lar Tree lover would do and I bought 9. 

NINE.

I had no idea what I would need nine tiny lit­tle wood­en box­es for but I need­ed them, ya know?

I brought them home and start­ed lay­ing them out on the table, con­tem­plat­ing their trans­for­ma­tion, and that’s when it hit me.…glue them together.

Of course!

I glued all nine of them togeth­er to cre­ate one sin­gle lit­tle unit of cubbies.

They did­n’t line up just per­fect­ly, but hey they were from the Dol­lar Tree so what could you expect? Nev­er­the­less, I per­sist­ed and knew this was going to be adorable once it was wrapped up.

Next came the stain­ing and attach­ing of the the lit­tle han­dles. I used a blend of water and Antique Glaze by Waver­ly, which can be found at Wal­mart, to achieve this light­ly aged look.

I made han­dles using pieces from the wood­en tum­bling tow­er game, also found at dol­lar tree. They were the per­fect size and shape for the Dol­lar Tree DIY and just seemed to take these lit­tle box­es to the next lev­el. I used a sec­ond blog for spac­ing, so I could keep the han­dles at the same lev­el. It was this step of the project that I knew it was resem­bling the look of an old card catalog. 

As I was cre­at­ing this lit­tle piece, it took me back to my ele­men­tary school days and the old wood­en card cat­a­log that sat adja­cent to the librar­i­ans desk. It had a smell of musty wood and aged paper when you would open it’s draw­ers and at the time it seemed impos­si­ble to under­stand the con­tents, but still, it was fascinating. 

The final touch to this lit­tle Dol­lar Tree DIY Card Cat­a­log, was the lit­tle touch of wood burn­ing. I stamped each box with a let­ter of the alpha­bet and it real­ly was the icing on the cake. I used a wood burn­ing tool like this one along with some stamps to cre­ate this unique look.