Paints Organizer for Figurines Painters.

If you are a figurines painter and need to organize your painting workshop without spending to much money, this instructable should help (I hope).

I made these "paint shelves" more than five years ago and they're still functional today.

Main idea consist in "stairs" for the paint pots in the middle and places to put brushes, cutters and other tools on the sides.

I must apologize my English should not be very good and measures are in cm rather than inches as I am French. I hope you'll understand.

Step 1: Tools and Material

The most expensive part of these shelves will be the hot glue sticks.

All other parts are reuse.

To do exactly the same as I did, you'll need the following.

Materials

At least 4 65cm x 43 strong cardboard calendars,
2 round boxes : I used a tobacco box (wilder one) and a dairy dessert metal box (taller one)
small pieces of foam
cereal light cardboard for the corner's round shelves.
paint (if you want to paint it to look smarter)

Tools

metallic ruler
strong cutter
compass (if you want to make the round corner)
pen
hot glue gun
paint brush (if you want to paint it)

Step 2: Cutting Parts

Main part of the shelves are the supports. Their dimensions are based on "Citadel" paint pots so you should adapt them depending on the number of shelves you want and the size of the pots.

For the 2 straight parts that are 27cm long (including the tools storages) and the round corner part, you'll need 7parts like the one represented here.

That represents one support at each end of the straight part and 3 for the round corner.

Note that if you want to make longer shelves (mine are 20cm long, remaining 7cm are tool storages) or if you want to store heavier things, an intermediate support should be a good idea.

Horizontal parts of the shelves are 3,5cm wide ribs.

Front part of the shelves are 3,7cm wide ribs (2mm that exceed above shelf to avoid pots from falling) for all the shelves except the one at the bottom that is 4mm wide (to hide shelves "floor" ).

They are cut in strong cardboard for straight shelves and in cereal box thin cardboard for round corner as the need to be twisted to be stuck on round shelves faces.

For the "floors" (sorry I don't know the correct word in English), their dimensions will depend the length you'll want for your shelves. Mine are 27cm long including tools storage so my "floors" are 17,5cm x 27cm.

For the round corner, the floor is a quarter of 35cm diameter disk while the shelves are round strips as shown in above scheme.

Step 3: Construction

First, supports are glued with the hot glue gun on the floors. Use the set square to glue them perpendicularly and don't hesitate to put many glue to make it strong.

One support is glued at each end for straight parts (letting needed space for tools storage).

For round corner, glue the supports as shown in above scheme, bottommost shelf in circle center, highest one on periphery

Then, always using hot glue, stick the shelves on the supports.

Then, glue the shelves fronts on the supports and on the shelves.

Shelves back are made in strong cardboard for straight shelves and in thin cardboard for round corner. They need to jut out 2mm above the topmost shelf to avoid pot falling behind the shelf. Just measure your finished shelf to know exact measure as it should depend used cardboard thickness.

Step 4: Tools Storages

If you don't need the tool storages, You should ensure pots will not fall on the free end by sticking matches on the shelf end. Other end should be stuck - with or without glue depending on the modularity you want - to the round corner.

One of the tool storage is just made by "forgetting" to glue the shelves on the supports. As is, there's one 7cm x 3,5 cm hole prolongating each shelf. As taller one are a bit to deep, foam has been glued on the floor to raise it.

Other tool storage is made from a tobacco box (wide and small) and a dairy dessert metal box (taller one).

Before gluing them, I used the widest one to mark the bottommost shelves to ease a correct cut.

boxes have been glued on the floor with hot glue.

To fill the gap between them, I sculpted two little part of foam and a part of cardboard is glued on their side.