Bedside Phone Charging Tidy

Where do you put your phone when it's charging? Do you have a special place for it?

We have coasters on our bedside tables, for that late night or Sunday morning cuppa. Very sensible, very normal. Except someone had a slightly odd habit of putting his mobile phone on his coaster! When you're carrying two mugs of tea you really just want to be able to put one down, not faff about moving a phone first.

I thought if I made a place especially for the phone it might help so this is what I came up with; a "Bedside Phone Charging Tidy" 

It started life as part of some packaging from a nail varnish set. I'd used this in our old house on my bedside table to corral my bits and pieces (pen, bookmark, hand cream, nail file etc) It was just too nice to throw away! Any study flat box would work for this though.

But in our new house we have a classy cream/white and gold look going in the bedroom so for this to work it was going to need a makeover!

First I sprayed the inside gold. 

This was just a little left over spray paint from my geometric DIY art work and gold heart pot.

The base turned out a little lumpy so I decided to cover that with paper along with the outside.

This paper is just a sample bit of wall paper, left over from my "divide and conquer" drawer dividers. As you can see I just drew round the box (using my cup of tea to keep the paper from rolling up on me!) then I just trimmed a few mm inside the line and checked it fitted inside the box nicely. I drew round the sides of the box to and cut those out as well.

Then I just used a layer of Mod Podge to stick the paper in position and another coat of the Mod Podge over the top to seal. 

I left it to dry on a tin like this so it didn't stick to the table.

The last thing was to cut a little hole for the charger lead to poke through. Once the glue was dry I just cut this carefully with a craft knife.

And look - the coaster is free, all ready for a nice cuppa!
I made a different kind of phone charging holder a few years ago, in fact it was one of my really early posts. You can find it here, it's one where you use an old plastic bottle and it hangs from the plug socket. They worked great in the kitchen at our old house, the kids have them in their rooms now.