Pinterest Challenge: Jewelry Storage & Display
Posted by Liz (March 14, 2012 at 4:55 pm), 4 Comments
My Pinterest Challenge Winter Edition: Jewelry Display
The Backstory: There are a few things you should know about my house. First, is that I’m super proud that I can afford to own my own home – especially a nice big one with a pool in a great neighborhood. My house is my little slice of heaven. It was definitely love at first sight – I put in an offer on the day I saw it, which just so happened to be the first day it was on the market. So I guess it was meant to be.
But after we moved in, I’ve had this love/hate relationship with it. I never feel like I have enough money to make the changes or buy the furniture I want (I’m sure most everybody feels that way) – and at the same time, this house has character – but it’s not necessarily the type of character I like. For example, I have those knockdown texture walls – something I didn’t think would annoy me as much as they do but they are WAY expensive to remove so… I’m learning to love them… kind of.
Like I said, though, it’s love/hate – and recently I started to try to look at my home with fresh eyes – and I feel like there’s potential. There totally are inexpensive ways to make a house feel completely different – like painting the walls, something we intend to do very soon. That stuff, making my home beautiful, makes me excited (see “home” inspiration pinterest board):
So when Candie proposed we take part in Young House Love’s/Bower Power’s ‘Pinterest Challenge’, I thought I should show my house some respect and upgrade a corner that I knew needed some love. And how better to do that than dress it up with JEWELRY:
The idea was to take this mess (notice how I’m obsessed with gold, aqua and purple):
… and this corner of my bathroom …
… and make it look pretty like this:
First, I looked through all of my Pinterest inspiration. And Ken (hubby) and I talked through how motivated I (he) was to build the frame part of the jewelry holder out of trim from Lowe’s. We decided that based on the deadline Candie (with the help of Katie and Sherry) and I had given ourselves of Wednesday, I should probably just repurpose an existing frame from Goodwill.
Then, I remembered that it’s Sunday and Goodwill is closed. See, and you other moms know this, sometimes the weekends just escape you, and things you meant to do specifically on Saturday just didn’t get done because you decided to spend quality time with your baby and his grandma at the zoo feeding lory birds and riding the carousel.
So I resigned myself to finding the frame at Michael’s, knowing full well that their prices on frames are, well, a bit high – but they’re having this perpetual sale in their frame section, so it evens out, right? I really didn’t feel like digging through Homegoods or Target with baby in tow so off to Michael’s we went and found this 9×20″ shadowbox ($14.99) and a wooden dowel ($.59):
The frame’s sides are nice & deep – but the downside of a shadowbox like this is that the “door” part had glass in it. So I explored a bit and realized I could pull the frame out that held the glass in there like so:
Then comes the question – how do I attach my dowels to the frame? Glue doesn’t seem strong enough and although I love hot-glueing things, I’m the first to admit it’s not perfect. And after my foray with epoxy (don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome – a bit smelly but who’s judging?), I knew I’d need a strong & sturdy construction to hold up my necklaces & bracelets. The magic word! Construction… and, hubby steps in with ideas, hardware and tools:
Measuring and figuring out our options… then he did a “dry run” dowel for testing. He’s so thorough, gotta love that:
And it works! On to the real deal. I painted my dowel a mix of black & brown (Martha Stewart craft paints, aren’t they the greatest? Some colors are on clearance right now at Michael’s btw):
And hubby got to work on the painted dowels – with power tools – though he admits it is the smallest drill bit he owns so it doesn’t make him feel all that manly:
I patched up the paint job and connected the dots:
Then we were ready to take down the old O-ring towel holder (or whatever that was) and hang up the shiny new jewelry holder:
And here it is all styled & ready to motivate me to wear jewelry!
I’m happy with how it turned out – and when I fulfill my dream of painting my bathroom Tiffany blue and upgrading the hardware to oil-rubbed bronze (or ORB as Sherry and Katie so lovingly refer to it), it’ll pop even more.
Project materials grand total: $15.58
Frame: $14.99
Dowel: $.59
Paint: had already
Cup Hooks: had already
Hanging Hardware: had already
Any of you have a great jewelry storage solution? Or maybe you have also decided to accept the Pinterest Challenge? Tell us about it!
Want to see the outcome of Candie’s Challenge? Check it out here.
Posted in: Pinterest Challenge
[...] Psst: Update! You can check out Liz’s how-to on how she made her jewelry storage & display, here. [...]
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