When I got married last summer, I got a really nice spice rack from our registry with 20 different spices on it. This was the biggest spice rack that I could find, and yet it still had only the really basic cooking spices. Where were my staple mexican and indian spices? Luckily, I had my own stash of spices that I had accumulated from my college cooking days. My only dilemma was how to organize them all?
I don't want another spice rack on the countertop because I didn't want to add more clutter to that valuable prep space and I knew I wouldn't be able to find anything to match this one. I had also seen some hanging spice racks and spice shelves to go inside the kitchen cabinet but they all just looked messy to me. I finally decided that I would get a spice tray for the drawer to go under my countertop spice rack since the labels would be easy to read at a glance and they would be easily accessible. No need to peer up into a high cabinet, rotate a carousel to read all the labels, or search behind bottes that are stacked up in front of one another.
I am not a big fan of how the red plastic McCormick bottles look in the drawer and since they were round I know they would be rolling all around. So I decided to decant the spices in pretty square glass jars. I also wanted to mirror the style of my countertop spice rack with the black labels and white writing and since chalkboard labels are in style now, I decided to go with a round chalkboard label.
Here's what I came up with:
Excuse the really crappy beat up cabinets in our rental house.
Aren't the chalkboard labels cute? I love how you can see the beautiful spices on display in the clear glass jars.
Since I couldn't fit all of my extra spices on the rack, I just put my most frequently used spices in the glass jars and put the smaller bottles and less frequented spices on the side. They actually all fit in the drawer perfectly and they are all easy to see and read.
If you want to find out the details on where I bought all of the materials and how to make the spice rack keep reading....
First I bought this plastic tray from The Container Store:
http://www.containerstore.com/shop/kitchen/spiceStorage?productId=10024293&N=70879
The spice tray is actually pictured with square glass spice bottles, but they don't sell anything similar on the site so I went to good ol' amazon. I bought 12 to fill up the spice tray.
http://www.amazon.com/RSVP-Square-Glass-Spice-6-Pack/dp/B00BIPW2PW/ref=sr_1_45?ie=UTF8&qid=1365540934&sr=8-45&keywords=rsvp+spice+jars
To make the labels, I bought these large chalkboard label stickers since I could not find any small round chalkboard spice labels to fit my bottles.
You can find these in the Martha Stewart Collection at Staples
I then used a circle shape puncher to punch out round labels to fit the front of my jars.
You can find these shape punchers at any craft store. I think I bought this one at Michaels.
Once I had my round sticker label, I adhered it to the front of the glass spice jar and decanted the spices from their plastic McCormick bottles to the glass spice jars.
I had originally planned to use chalk to write the names of the spices on the front of the jars, but not only was it really difficult to write the tiny letters (even with a sharpened piece of chalk), but the labels rubbed off really easily and I was afraid I would accidentally erase the label and not recognize what kind of spice was in the jar.
So instead of using chalk, I decided to use an extra fine point white Sharpie paint pen to write all the names of the spices on the front of the jars. I got this one at Michaels.
This worked liked a charm. This way I got the look of the chalkboard labels without having to worry about the mess. And if I decide to change the label on one of the jars later on the package of sticker I bought was big enough that I can make extra labels.
And voila! That's it!
Easy project for a beautiful, organized spice drawer.
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