Completed Goals: Goal 75 & Goal 78

Beauty is invigorating; it's essential to the human spirit. I can't imagine being as productive and buoyant as I am if I did not work from an office that is as carefully considered as my living and bedroom... your environment plays a big part in how you feel- and you should live in harmony with your desires.


~ Mary McDonald

Goal 75: Finish Jewelry Frame Coark Board
Goal 78: Overhaul Jewelry Box

I have a lot of costume jewelry. Not a crazy amount, well not to me anyway, the big guy may question my sanity at times. But I think he has other reasons for that completely unrelated to my bracelet collection. ;-)

I wanted something that would give me a few things as far as jewelry organization goes. I need to be able to see what I have quickly. Some of my things were so buried, I kinda forgot about them. Most of those pieces were things I got in high school, so that's probably not a bad thing, but it wasn't great either. This project took a few steps that I hadn't anticipated.

Whatever it was, would have to be pretty. I'd flagged the space above my dresser in our closet. It's a space that not everyone will see, so it can be a little more on the girly side or a little riskier than what I'd do in the main bedroom.

I'd seen a few different cork boards and bulletin boards that have been turned in to jewelry boards across the blogosphere. I figured I could try making my own. I'm not crafty, but I like to pretend. We had an auction for charity at our office earlier in 2010 and I picked up this picture for $7.  

The irises were not really my thing. This is just after I'd gotten it set up in the garage to paint it. Yes, in case you're curious that is an old Slip N Slide. Makes a great drop cloth.

What I really liked about it was the detail on the frame. That's the part I was planning to keep anyway. My initial plan was to paint the frame bright red, using the last of the red paint we still ahd from the accent wall in the apartment. After painting that wall, and then having to prime over it when we moved out, I think it's safe to say we're done with red walls.

This is the first coat of the red paint. It probably took me a bout 5 to get it where I really wanted it.

After painting, I tried filling in the frame with some cork tiles. They weren't quite the right size, so some cutting was necessary to get them to fit. A little shifting and everythign seemed to work out fine. I used a spray adhesive to keep the tiles on. Of course my trusty side kick was there to help. He didn't help very much though, I think he was more interested in searching the garage for bugs.

This is where I think I made my mistake. I painted the cork tiles. I'd painted a corkboard before, the one that hangs in our laundry room so I hadn't really thought anything about what the paint would do to the cork. Cork is absorbent. It soaked up a boatload of paint. So much paint in fact that the cork warped and pulled away from the picture. The spray adhesive did not hold up to that. So I was left with a lovely red frame and a hot mess of painted cork. This was not going to work.

I was trying to figure out how to salvage what I'd started and make the cork work. The big guy suggested cutting my losses, removing the cork and the picture and just hanging the frame. As you can see in the picture above, that's exactly what we did. I had a lot of stuff on top of my dresser. I'd like to say it was all organized, but it wasn't.

Once the frame was up it was time to fill it in with the jewelry from the top of the dresser. I took this opportunity to clean out my jewelry box. It's the red one on top of the dresser. I wound up with this configuration of some 3M command adhesive hooks to hang all my necklaces. Earrings and bracelets are still in the jewelry box.

It's much more fun to look at than the blank wall.