Life at 818: July 2013

You may have noticed, I'm NOT a super crafty person. I mean, I can sew a straight line and paint some stuff, but I'm not what I would call "creative." [Now, I was just schooled on saying "I'm not creative" by the wonderfully funny/talented/creative/smart Mandi over at Vintage Revivals, so I will say this once, and only once, now never to be uttered again] But recently I saw something on Pinterest and I thought I could do it!

(not sure about photo credit here - when you click on the pic on Pinterest it takes you to this blog, but I couldn't find this exact picture on the blog..?)

My sweet step-daughter, Chelsea, has lots of fun jewelry (and other stuff!), but just had it everywhere on her dresser. Yes, this is her actual dresser, this is not a reenactment.

She needed a place to hang her dangley earrings and necklaces! I've been wanting to do this project for a while but had not run across the right frame. A couple of weeks ago my sweet Hubby went with me to the flea markets (we HAD to get out of the house! It's been raining and raining, seriously, like, every weekend here in the ATL - I was going berrzerk!!) and he found this frame...

Perfect! At first I thought I would use some fabric that I had left over from another project, but I realized that the fabric weave might be too tight and make it hard to put the earrings through. So I went to Jo-Ann Fabric and got a yard of brownish tan burlap - and I have TONs of it left over. I also got some quilt batting (that was on sale) to go behind the burlap. Well, the batting was white and it showed through too much. Humph. So I sprayed it gold. Yes, I said that - I spray painted the batting gold.

So, here's how it went down - pretty simple really - Hubby measured the inside of the opening of the frame and cut a piece of thin plywood (that he had sitting around in the garage) to fit inside the opening - not real tight though, he left a little wiggle room. Then I used that as a pattern and cut the batting the same size.

This is the kind I bought. It was on sale and apparently you can iron it to something...? who knew?

Then, like I said, I didn't like the white batting (or fleece..?) to show through the burlap, so I painted it with some gold Rust-Oleum

Yeah, what evs.. Then I cut the burlap the right size, laid it on top of the batting, turned it over and started stapling

(I have the best helper, eh? and how about that lovely beach towel protecting the counter.. huh,huh?) Then we crammed it in the back of the frame and Hubby took to stapling again!

This is when we realized we probably should have made some holes in the batting before we put the whole thing together. We wanted to attach a couple of drawer knobs and we would have to be very careful not to mess up the batting and the burlap. We measured where we wanted the knob and cut a teeny tiny bit into the burlap and he drilled through the batting to the back of the wood. The batting started twisting around the drill bit and he would have to stop and back it out. We did this very slowly until we made it all the way through.

For the second knob we measured and drilled on the back and pushed the screw through. It turned out exactly like I had pictured it!

Cost-wise it was a good deal:

Frame: $12

Batting: $5 (and I have tons left over for more projects)

Burlap: $4 (again, have left over for more projects)

Plywood, spray paint, and brass knobs we already had on hand

Total cost: around $20

Not bad...not bad at all... (pats self on back)

She really likes it and it was a fun little project to do with my Hubby. Now I want to make one for Amanda and Rachael and even one for me! Just gotta keep an eye out for some pretty frames!

Two weeks til the Haven Conference here in Atlanta - I'm really looking forward to it!

Linking up with That DIY Party over at DIY Showoff !