A Place for my Baubles....

At least a year ago I picked up one of those vintage type drawers at a local antique store.  I've seen people do fabulous things with them- put photos in each little compartment, use it for displaying small figurines, etc.  I'd planned to use mine for photos but never really got around to it.  Then I saw someone had put little hooks in each compartment and was using it as a jewelry rack.  Aha!  We had an empty wall in our bedroom by my dresser and I just knew that was the perfect place for it!  I already had my necklaces on the wall on a little rack I decorated years and years ago and have loved being able to easily see everything:

And so I decided to use my type tray on the opposite wall to display earrings and other jewelry.  I couldn't find small hooks like I wanted so I ended up scouring the jewelry findings aisle at the craft store and picked up a few things I thought might work, along with some epoxy type super strong glue.

I painted inside some of the compartments with some paint samples we'd picked up while on a search for the perfect wall color for the bedroom.  None of them were right on the wall (you can see some of the test swatches on the wall behind my new jewelry display) but the little pots of paint came complete with brushes and were great for this project. 

I used pin backs, epoxied to the compartments for earring display.  I also used my dremel to drill small holes on either side of a few compartments and slide some heavy duty copper wire in to hang earrings on. I wanted a way to display post style earrings as well so I covered a piece of foam with glue and fabric and popped it into a couple of the compartments- my post earrings pop right in and out and I just keep the backs in a little dish in my dresser.

I left some small photos of LP in a few sections and used a few other sections to display some of my larger rings in.  I still have a few empty spaces for earrings to hang and some other empty compartments to add more rings or little bits and pieces of things that I might collect.

I really love the way this turned out.  It allows me to see my jewelry (and hopefully start wearing it more) and is both functional and beautiful.  Now we just have to track down the right wall color! We're going for grey- but the greys we've tried so far have been too dark (like the one shown in these photos on the wall), or had a green, blue, or purple tint to them (all of the paints I used to paint this box have grey names- but they don't look grey in real life!).  Getting this little project done though has me itching to get some more sample colors and to get our master bedroom all prettied up!