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...

Scrabble Tile Jewelry

I was scheming away the other night, trying to figure out how I could make some more jewelry to wear for Halloween, since I don't have the cash to buy any. I was thinking about my inventory of junk jewelry and nothing seemed right. I thought even if it was super simple, like saying "boo" it would work. Voila! Inspiration hit me, I have a whole bunch of scrabble tiles that I've bought for scrapbooking and crafts. Why not drill holes into them and make jewelry?? Here's what I came up with:

You can pick up scrabble tiles pretty inexpensively on eBay but I love finding them at garage sales and thrift stores. I used a small drill and an old scrap piece of wood to do my drilling. You have to be careful with the drilling, if you drill too close to the tile's edge it will break or be too weak to use with jump rings. If you drill too far in, it makes it really difficult to use the jump rings. Good luck with that. The other thing that tripped me up was that I wasn't paying attention to which tiles I was drilling and I accidentally drilled holes at the top of the "I" and "R" in Girl. I suppose I could have added charms or something, but I just switched them out, they are pretty common letters in the scrabble sets. I started with the "Boo" earrings for Halloween, then I thought it would be fun to make a necklace for my daughter for homecoming. Our town's colors are purple and gold and our team is the Arrows. It was pretty simple from there. My husband suggested making a bracelet in case my not-girly daughter wouldn't wear the necklace. So I tried using the gold thread to link the letters, then used the jump rings to attach the word to the purple cording. I don't like it as much as the necklace but my 4 year old loves it. I think I'll make a necklace for myself too. The last project I made today with the tiles was a Girl Scouts bracelet. I thought maybe it would look nicer and be more flexible if I used a 3-ring combination to connect each tile. I got the whole thing done and realized that it wasn't as strong as the large jump ring style because now there were 3 weak points instead of just one. So I took it apart and switched it to the larger jump rings. It turned out better, and I think it will be pretty strong

Recycle a broken spoon ring into earrings.

I have been blessed to get some of my Dad's mother's jewelry. Grandma died about 30 years ago, so her jewelry is at least that old; most of it was costume and I use it in other projects, but some of it was nice stuff so I kept them to wear. My 3 favorite pieces were my angel wings ring - like a spoon ring that wrapped around my finger (sterling silver), my gold and silver cuff bracelet and my sterling silver spoon ring. I can't wear the angel wings anymore because it broke, probably from constant wear and readjustments. My husband took it to the jewelers and had it fixed, and that is when we discovered it was sterling silver. But I have been told it is too thing for everyday wear, so I save it for special occasions. So I started wearing my spoon ring, it was a really cool one that was identical on both ends instead of one being smaller than the other. Unfortunately last month it broke, almost exactly in the center.

So, what to do??? I had a flash of inspiration and thought I might make the two sides into earrings since they matched pretty closely. I started by putting the pieces of the ring between 2 washcloths and gently hammering them flat. Then I used a pair of needle-nosed pliers and carefully bent the skinny top part back on itself to make a loop behind each piece.

Finishing the earrings was a simple as adding a jump ring to each one and some french hooks. Super easy, and I think super cute.