WordPress decided to like me again and let me upload pictures. Yay!
So, like I promised I prettyfied my earring store/organizer over the last weekend.
You might remember that I edited my earring collection. I had too many I didn’t like anymore, so I put them aside. Here’s what I started with:
I’m actually pretty good at getting rid of stuff I don’t like and use anymore, be it clothes or earrings or shoes…
So here’s my edited earring collection:
As you can see I got rid of quite a few.
I mean, why hold on to earrings you don’t wear anymore? Most of mine are usually pretty cheap and from H&M, and after a while the color changes and they just don’t look good anymore, so it doesn’t hurt to let them go.
I didn’t toss them though. I put them away in a small bag, and maybe my mom likes some of them or after not seeing them for a while I might change my mind about some.
So now it’s time to show you how I used to organize my earrings (and still do, just prettier now).
I had a piece of wood left when I moved in with a friend in college. We had bought a long one to use as a shelf in the kitchen, but it turned out to be too long. So I took the leftover piece to do something with it.
I had some IKEA hooks left and screwed them in the wood, but I only had a few so I also used nails. I loved how easy it was and how it gave me a good overview of all my earrings. I used to store them in a box before, and they would get all tangled up and I had even forgotten about a few of them.
But now I wanted something new. Not only did I not like the mix of hooks and nails anymore, but the raw wood also bothered me. Especially when I took down my earrings to get rid of some of them and saw this:
Not only can you clearly see how the wood darkened, but also are the sides not straight.
The darkened wood made it easy to put the earrings back in the spot where they used to be, but that was the only positive thing I could find here. The crooked sides seriously bothered me!
Enter our neighbor.
He has a workshop in his backyard, and within two minutes the sides of the piece of wood were straight!
Blurry picture. Sorry!
He actually cut off just a tiny little bit. Can you see the mark on the right side? That’s where he wanted to cut first but then he cut off even less.
So the straight sides were an improvement already.
Enter the can of paint I got for free 2 years ago and never opened.
YUCK!
The color was awful! I thought it was gonna be some deep red with a hint of purple. Instead, it was deep, deep, almost black, purple! Not only was it not a nice color, it totally wouldn’t go with the rest of my room. Or my taste.
So I had the brilliant (or so I thought) idea of glueing some wrapping paper to the wood.
Yeah…
Who would have thought something like this would happen if you use a gluestick to glue wrapping paper to wood?
Everyone except me, that’s who!
So I took the paper off and though about what I was going to do. I wanted to use the wrapping paper because I really liked the color, but glueing obviously was not an option.
So I decided to just wrap it around the wood, kinda like you wrap a present, and use duct tape on the back to make it stick.
When I first wrapped it, the wood was still a little sticky from the gluestick. The waper got a little wrinkly again, but with a second layer of wrapping paper that was fixed.
So now it was time to figure out where I wanted to place the hooks. I decided to put 6 hooks in the first row. So I measured, used a pencil to mark where I wanted to screw in the hooks, and then noticed that I didn’t measure right.
Since I had used a pencil I thought I could just erase the tiny marks I had made and start over. Who would have thought that using an eraser on cheap IKEA wrapping paper might not work??
While I erased the color of the wrapping paper, the pencil mark stayed put…
And that frayed out paper right next to it? That’s what happens when you just take a screw and start screwing it into the wood. Actually, you’re not going into the wood with it. All it does is damage the paper.
Eventually I had the brilliant (this time I mean it!) idea of using a hammer and a nail and preparing the hole for the hook with it.
I had the hooks screwed in in no time!
After I was done with the first row of hooks, I put some earrings on the hooks to see how far apart the first and second row would have to be. I was only going to hang smaller ones in the first row and the bigger ones on the lower rows, but I wanted to make sure it would all look good.
Then I measured again, prepared the holes with a nail and hammer, screwed in the hooks, repeated with row 3 and 4, and before I knew it I was done!
I hung it all up on the wall again, and here’s my new earring organizer storage board thing:
So yeah, the lighter mark on the upper right corner kinda bothers me a little, but I guess I can see past it.
I love the outcome! It looks so clean, and there’s even hooks left. Looks like I might have to buy some new earrings ;-)
I’ve been meaning to post pictures of my diy earring thing, but for some reason I can’t upload pictures at the moment. Neither on wordpress nor on flickr.
This sucks!
So to give you at least a picture of something…
my new favorite teacup!
It’s from GreenGate. And even though you can’t even touch it when there’s a hot drink in there because it has no handle- I love it!
Time for another one of my Thomas Sabo charms!
I got this one for my birthday last year from my parents:
Just like the others, I love it!
It is a little blurry, but it looks better when you click on it.
I think I’m gonna prettify (is that a word?) my earring storage this weekend.
I already have them organized in a way that works great for me, but it could be prettier.
Right now it’s just a piece of wood and some hooks and nails. I wanna paint it with some paint I got from a family whose babysitter I used to be. They bought it to paint a wall in their living room, but ended up not using it and going with a greige instead of the red/purple they had bought.
Guess what?
I’ve had that paint for almost 2 years now, and I’ve never opened it!
Yeah.
I have no idea what it looks like.
But I figured since it’s there I could just as well use it. I don’t wanna go with a white background for my earrings cause I think the silver ones might not be visible enough.
And I love surprises. (I better really like the color…)
I’m also going to replace the nails with hooks, to give the whole thing a more pulled-together look. When I made it I only had a few hooks left, but today, on his way back from work, my dad called, telling me he was at IKEA.
So I’m gonna use these:
I used some of these last time, and I like them so much better than nails!
So. Now that I’ve put this out there for the 3 of you to read, I better really get this done over the weekend!
I have a few new favorites that I’ve been spending my time with.
One of them is the domino decorating book:
It’s the best decorating book I’ve ever met! I think it should be called the book of decorating. Cause to me it is!
Seriously, I’m in love! It gives such great advice on how to find and identify your style and has great examples of rooms and why they work and tells you how to make rooms work for you. It’s just plain awesome!
It was not cheap and I had it in my hands and put it back a couple of times, but the splurge was totally worth it!
I bought it at Urban Outfitters in Hamburg, and I also bought this one:
I gotta admit though, I bought it cause it’s pretty!
It was on clearance for just about 6€, and I love all the pretty pictures in it!
I mean…
How am I supposed to resist?
I would totally frame this and put it on my wall. How cute would this be in a bathroom or dressing room?!
And then there are quotes like this in it that just make me love it!
Almost the best thing about these books, though, is that they look great between all my other books. I pretty much judge a book by its cover. That’s why I bought Eat Pray Love. Didn’t love it, but it sure looks good!
Well, actually I haven’t been doing all that much.
Maybe you’ve noticed, I changed the colors and the header on the blog. I didn’t really feel the pink, and these are more “my” colors, so I’m pretty happy with the result.
I’ve also organized my earrings. I’ll show you how I keep them organized another time, so for now I’ll just give you a picture of them before I decided which to keep and which to get rid of:
I had too many I didn’t like anymore, so for now I put them away. Maybe they’ll find a new home.
I’ve been spending most of my time here…
listening to these…
(buy them if you’re a gleek like me!)
while eating a lot of this (and hitting the gym after…):
It’s Pioneer Woman’s chocolate sheet cake (did I ever mention that I got her cookbook for my birthday?). And it is, indeed, THE BEST chocolate cake EVER! Super soft and moist and chocolate-y and absolutely delicious!
I’ve also redecorated my windowsill when I took down all the Christmas decorations a while ago.
Here’s the Christmas version:
Ugh. Look at the rain. Yuck!
And here’s the current winter version:
Yay, snow!
I actually made the snowflakes! My mom does a lot of pottery, and I can do simple things like using cookie cutters to make these:
My mom has tons of cookie cutters, but these are especially cute!
And I’ve also done something I’m really proud of!
I bought an amaryllis and haven’t killed it (yet)!
It actually developed really well, as you can see here:
Yay for me! Maybe I have a green thumb after all?
It’s still really cold here, and today it snowed a bit again (yay!).
The result of the cold: Pretty icicles!
The result of the snowfall, however, is very pretty overall, but I had to dig my car out from under this:
I was kinda sad to remove all the snow because I thought it looked nice.
Here’s to hoping for more snow..
