DIY Jewelry Organizer

Lately I've been noticing what a big mess my dressing table seems to be. I have a nice jewelry box where I keep my expensive jewelry, a store-bought organizer for my costume jewelry and I keep my bracelets on vases. But it looks cluttered. And tacky. And I wasn't overly thrilled with the store-bought organizer. What to do?

Well the obvious solution is DIY!!! So after a few fails (and I mean epic fails that basically ruined the store-bought organizer) I decided to hit the thrift stores and find a sturdy shelf that could hold my necklaces, earrings, dangling earrings, rings and bracelets. Not as easy as it sounds, but for $4.99 I found this:

It isn't gorgeous, but it has the bare bones of something useful. Since the brackets on the bottom shelf were broken, I took the shelf apart and removed all the brackets. Then I decided to move the bottom shelf down (there were already holes drilled where I think it might have attached to a dresser or something.) Then I broke out the Clorox wipes and cleaned it up.

Oh, and here is Jack demonstrating that the shelves are placed approximately sausage-sized-cat apart.

See? Better already.
My first approach at painting the shelf was a black and white motif with women's silhouette's...my husband wasn't too thrilled with that. And before you ask, the organizer is going into OUR bedroom so I guess HE should get A SMALL bit of say in how it looks. He's more conservative than me, prefers neutrals and would be happier if I only wore small unobtrusive jewelry. Yeah, trying to please him only goes so far.
I went down to the storage room and found an old can of latex paint. It's satin finish, which I like, and a nice pale brown. My original plan was to do the pale brown base coat, use lace as a stencil and spray paint a dark brown over the lace. Would have been gorgeous...but not for $7.97 a yard for lace. Never one to pass up a bargain, I noticed that sheets of duct tape were on clearance. I figured, I can print on the duct tape (right 'cause anything will go through my printer,) and then cut the shapes out, use them as stencils with the spray paint and peel them off.

All I'd need to do was whip out my really cool rotating finger knife and cut out some butterflies.

Flaw #1 The printer would absolutely not feed the duct tape sheet through.
Flaw #2 The duct tape was hard to cut through the backing paper, and as a result, not all the butterflies came out pretty.
Flaw #3 My carpal tunnel wasn't feeling the whole carve 3 sheets of duct tape with extreme pressure on the blade to get all the way through.

So I just traced over the butterflies I had printed on regular paper onto the backing paper side of the duct tape sheet. There isn't any ink transfer but you get the impression to work with. I whipped out my scissors and cut out as many as I could get in various sizes - I ended up just using 2 sheets. All that was left was to apply them in a pleasing design, spray paint over them and then peel them off.

Flaw #1 When you put duct tape shapes onto latex paint and then try to peel it off, it takes the paint with it.

Now I have something I kind of like. I can scrap the whole spray-paint idea (it's cold and windy out anyway) and just leave it pale brown with the shock of neon pink butterflies scattered over it. It appeals to my need for color and hopefully it will appeal to his belief that it has to "fit in" with the rest of the bedroom.

But I'll have to leave the story off for now. I have decided to use 3 vintage coke bottles to keep my bracelets on, probably hot glued to the shelf...and I have a rough idea for my dangling earrings and necklaces...but so far no real victories in coming up with a DIY earring holder for post earrings. Oh and I want to make one of these for my rings, but I don't have a pair of heels to do it with just yet.

TO BE CONTINUED...