Honeycomb Shelves – Budget Friendly How To !

Honeycomb Shelves are super cool and very On-Trend! Problem is that they can be VERY expensive ! Or Not! (I’ll get to the “or NOT” in a sec !) There are other tutorials out there that show you how to “make your own” but they can be time consuming, labor intensive and…. frankly…still very costly ! Some are even Cheap looking ! (so why bother?). Aside from the hours of planning, measuring, cutting, gluing, clamping, sanding, painting….(whew!) you still need to buy wood and special clamping to accommodate their unique shape. You had better want them very badly! Or………Follow my tutorial below….

I have come up with the perfect design solution so that you can have your own “On Trend” Honeycomb Shelves and NOT spend much money, saves hours of labor and requires no special tools !

First, lets look at some Designs for Honeycomb Shelves and Their pricing !

 

A trio of honeycomb Shelves for $69.00 from “The Land Of Nod”

These are not too bad but still pricey and with an open back you can not really add any flair to them! They are also one solid unit so you can not move them around and get creative!

These 3 separate pieces from Etsy shop “Haase Handcraft” are very nice with modern styling, are handmade with your choice of wood including some reclaimed varieties but with prices for the trio starting at $89.00 and going as high as $158.00, depending on the wood you choose, these are not affordable to us mere mortals.

These pretties are from Wayfair and cost a whopping $119.99 ! Woosh!

Reality Time !

If you’re at all like me (and I think you are), You love high end, trendy Decor but you love your 401K too! So This tutorial is for all you Frugalistas out there!

I picked these “Handmade Wood Shadow Boxes-Hex” up at Target for $6.99 each

Here is the label so if you go looking for them in person you know exactly what to look for. They are in the same Isle as Isaac Mizrahi’s Gold Staplers. Between the greeting cards and the small appliances in housewares.

 Cool Ways To Arrange Them

Like this……..

or this…….

I like this……

They’re A little rough so a quick going over with a 250 grit sanding sponge smoothed them out nicely and took less than 10 minutes!

I painted all the sides, inside and out with white paint.

Taped off halfway on two of them, turning one upside down first.

Once I had my center line taped off, I added the newspaper to block the white from being sprayed with gold paint.

I sprayed one box completely gold and the other two half gold, one gold on top half and the other gold on bottom half.

when dry, remove the tape.

I then placed the bottom of the box on my material and traced the shape out to make it easier to cut inside the box. It is going to be about a quarter inch too big now.

Place the first pattern cut out in the box and carefully trim the excess. I do not care how sharp your exacto is, some material will snag. The best material is thick material but I bought what I liked the look of rather than for It’s thickness so I had some snags but we are going to fix that!

Now take THAT piece of pattern and place it on the material again. it has jagged edges so we are going to lay it as flat and smooth as possible.

Then taking a ruler, lay the ruler at the edge of , and on top of the top pattern. lay it from corner to corner. There will be material sticking out under the ruler in some places and some places will be too short and not show under the ruler. It will depend on how clean you are able to cut it inside the Honeycomb Box. Draw a straight line from corner to corner. Do this on each side of the Hex pattern.

Do you see where I snagged the corner and had to correct it with the ruled pattern?

You Catch On Real Fast!!

 

Then I cut them out smoothly and cleanly with my super sharp scissor!

Placed them in the boxes to make sure they were the right size all the way around.

(Tip Time; If your material has creases or wrinkles, iron them out before gluing them in the boxes).

Mine would not smooth out. I blame this on Elmer’s Spray Glue, which was not sticky enough to hold the material very well. I usually use 3M Spray Glue but this was closer to grab that day! Live and learn!

Ready To Glue

When I had my material set in the box exactly where I wanted it, I gently pulled back the top half, sprayed glue on the bottom of the box only and laid the material back down, smoothing as I did so….working from center out.

Then I folded the bottom half of the material up, sprayed with glue and laid it back gently, being sure not to move it out of place and smoothing from the center out.

Let the glue set.

There you have it!

Do you like the material I found? I bought it at Hobby Lobby (I do not have a fabric store in my little town!)

As far as time is concerned, It took about 2 hours to paint with the taping off and a couple coats drying. Cutting and gluing the material…. about an hour.

The Cost Breakdown

It was $6.99 per yard, on sale for 50% off. I bought only a half a yard which cost $1.90 Incl. Tax and gave me enough material to do 6 boxes plus the extra cut for the pattern. This made the fabric cost .32 cents incl. tax per box.

I used half a can of white spray paint and half a can of gold spray paint so we will price one can at $4.21 incl. tax. ( $1.40 per box).

The boxes were $7.57 Incl. tax  each.

I had the glue….

The total cost per box came to ……………DRUMROLL PLEASE.………. $9.29 each !!!!  #FrugalFabFind  !!!!!

The beauty is that you can add as many honeycomb Shelves as you want to your Design and in as many patterns as you like. Adding them one or two at a time….

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I hope that you found my tutorial on Honeycomb Shelves either mildly entertaining or even useful! Subscribe to get even more Ideas on frugal decor, design and DIY for real people on real budgets! Till I see you again, have a great day!

My Fave spray glue below!

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