Saturday, February 1, 2014

Child-Proof Crafting

...It's not the crafting that's child-proof, it's the RESULT!

David was napping (gasp!) one day recently, and I decided to finally tackle a project that had been in the works for the past 6 months or so.

Lacy Earring Holder
Ever since we moved in 1.5 years ago, I'd never really unpacked my jewelry. The previous owners of the apartment left behind a vanity table with plenty of drawers for storage...pretty, but not practical for having a toddler in the house. For the first several months, the vanity table was used for diaper and baby clothing storage. :)

Then I decided enough was enough and moved the baby stuff out, but jewelry and make-up didn't seem like the best items to be within reach, so I still couldn't move them in. So I was looking for ideas to put my jewelry HIGH UP.

I really liked the idea of using a picture frame. I saw some examples online. Some involved stretching wires horizontally across the picture frame, and others required stretching a lacy material or netting across the frame so that you could stick earrings through the holes. I like that joke about Pinterest that it helps you use "things you have around the house (just making a trip to 3-4 different stores to supplement)." I did try to make do with plain old materials not suited for the purpose, and that's part of why it took so long.

I bought a cheap-o frame at IKEA, and then Andrei spent a long time getting it to the right color. Then I wanted to use up the lacy scraps I'd found lying around, but it was this narrow strip, so I couldn't stretch it across the frame properly. I tried to stiffen it up with starch and that was pretty much a bust. Then I ended up trying to close the gaps with thread. This is all by way of saying that if you look closely, the final result is far from perfect. Those seams just jump out to me when I look at the photo. But I'm still happy with how it turned out. An acceptable creative solution and not too unattractive.

But when I went to fill it up with earrings, I found that I didn't have that many dangly (sp?) ones after all. What I do have a lot of is NECKLACES. What to do with THOSE? I actually bought a few pretty hooks but I'm not sure when we will actually mount them somewhere.

In a moment of desperation I threw a bunch of knick-knacks on top of the vanity mirror and dangled the necklaces down. It looks a bit silly and is far from stable. But now the necklaces are at eye level and aren't lying in a box all tangled together!

And it all brings a bit of color/personality to the bedroom.

Improvised Necklace Holder




2 comments:

  1. I don't know why it amuses me so much that you made an earring holder only to discover you don't have that many earrings. Like something I'd do. But, now everyone knows what to give you as gifts!

    ReplyDelete
  2. :) I sort of knew already, it's just that a lot of my earrings are actually studs and wouldn't attach to such a holder. But I'd rather have extra space than do the whole project only to have them not all fit!

    ReplyDelete

Just added word verification to reduce spam. Nothing personal!

You’re welcome to leave a link to your own blog here if it's relevant to this blog.

Please make sure that your comments are 1) relevant and 2) respectful (i.e. no cuss words, attacks on individuals).

Voices

 In the past month, it has been interesting to read the published thoughts of Russian friends as they've gotten their voice back upon es...