Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Ms. Walker Makes: DIY Vanity & Organizers

Sometimes when I'm not teaching or lesson planning, I like to make DIY projects. I know I have found a lot of inspiration for my home decorating projects online (hello, Pinterest!), so I have decided to share my results and products... Starting with this nifty piece of furniture that I transformed last summer.



I moved back to NJ from Massachusetts, and in my new abode I needed a new way to store my shoes and makeup. The piece of furniture that I desired needed to have a narrow depth -- only about as deep as my foot is long -- in order to not block a set of drawers positions perpendicular to it. And it needed to fit under my window.

An old twin-sized headboard with shelves turned out to be the perfect base for this project!

I used the instructions from this blog post to paint and finish my my particle board/laminate headboard with great success! If you want to refresh some cheap furniture, this is the  method to use.

While the existing structure provides shelves for beauty products, I need to add some additional shelving for my shoes. Enter crates from the craft store!



I used L-shaped brackets and a power drill to attach an additional shelf inside of each crate, then had my dad (best dad ever!) cut a board of wood to rest on top of the crates for the long shelf.



Of course, having this awesome piece of furniture to hold my stuff was all well and good, but let's be real -- I also needed to be able to organize my cosmetics! This is where things got crafty...



I had already purchased a few rolls of cute-printed wrapping paper from the Dollar Spot at Target (Shoe boxes of supplies look much nicer when wrapped). I used some of the paper to wrap a clementine crate as my base container and a toilet paper tube (yep, keepin' it cheap) for eyeliner pencils. I had a few pastel mini Chinese food style take-out containers leftover from my cousin's bridal shower, which nicely held individual eye shadows & chap sticks. In my search for little open-top boxes, I found containers intended to hold sugar packets at Christmas Tree Shop. Throw in a couple glass jars, and I had a very accessible, useful way to store my makeup!



I've used this cute method of storing makeup brushes since college! All you need is a clear container (mine is a candle holder) and some plastic beads. [Shout out to RDs Treya & Janel from William Paterson University circa 2008 for teaching me this trick.] The organizer tray that holds my hair products & deodorant, etc. was from Michael's arts & crafts store.



So, of course, my vanity isn't always styled this neatly. I went minimalist for the photo shoot... my version of minimalist.

When I get a chance, my next DIY project to share will be my jewelry organizers! (Or maybe the hand-dyed duvet cover & curtains that I made last summer... we shall see.)




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