Project: Jewelry Box

For anyone who knows me, knows I'm a known jewelry addict. I think that might sum up my obsession nicely. Over the years I've bought, made, explored different technics of making, and have worn plenty of jewelry. I can honestly say that I've been this way since at least the age of five when I got my first ever piece of jewelry. It was a Strawberry Shortcake ring and necklace for some occasion I can't even remember. All I remember was that I loved it. Funny enough for my daughters the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Over the years I have searched, and searched for a box that would suit me, and my style. After 37 years I decided I would make something instead of searching. I'm kind of an odd duck. I like traditional things, but with a whimsical side. Something a little daring, but sophisticated enough without being gaudy! So in came this idea.

 What also helped spur this little project along was going to the grocery store. Yep, the grocery store, one day I was there checking out and happened to look at the back of my receipt. There on the back was a 50% off coupon for any full price item at Joann's Fabric Store. I'm not super big on coupons, but who could pass up that?!?!?!  I decided to take the coupon up on its offer and found this wooden jewelry box. This is when the ideas started swirling around in my head.

The ever plain wooden jewelry box.

Originally $24.99, with 50% off it was about $14.

Not too shabby for a jewelry box; the sky is the limit when it comes to decorating ideas!

Reused my stencils.

The North Star has always been one of my all time favorite symbols. When I was a very little girl on Christmas Eve, while my parents were at church, I asked my Grandpa Bondie about the North Star. He walked me over the front door of their house, and opened up the door, and showed me where it was. Ever since then I've had this affinity for it. Maybe it's because it's a star, or maybe it was my favorite memory with him. Either way I've always loved it; maybe because you can always find your way by it. I need ALL the direction I can get. 

Tape helps, trust a sister on that one.

So once you've figured out how you want your stencils to lay, use scotch tape to make sure they stay where you want them. There's nothing worse than a stencil that moves!

The more tape the better. 

So once you've put your tape down, and centered your stencil, go to town and stencil away. You'll have to use new tape each time you pick it up and move it to another spot. That way it doesn't lose it's tackiness. 

Et Viola! 

I also did the sides, and the back. 

The front, top and the back look like one continuous stencil, it's the side that gave me a fuss. Not many people will look at this box on my dresser anyway, so I'm totally okay with it not being "perfect."

Here's the back, I added more after this picture was taken.

The one thing with stencils is that sometimes the paint doesn't go on as thick as you'd like. Granted you could wait till the paint dries and layer, but I don't have time for that kind of commitment. Either you can use too much paint and it bleeds, which isn't good, or you can use too little and it doesn't cover as thoroughly as you'd like. Plus with these stencils it was hard find a happy medium. There was probably a problem between the paint brush and the box, i.e. me. In my humble opinion, painting by hand is quicker and sometimes easier.

So this didn't take too long and here we are. We are ready for the stain.

Mitch bought new stain for another project we are working on, so I borrowed it.

We've got another project in the works, a wood project, a shocker I know. I'll put it on the blog in the next couple of weeks. This one has been in the mix for about 2 years. It's a recycled pallet trunk that Mitch, his dad, and I have been working on for a while. Good furniture takes time.

Stain time!

So something that I didn't think about when I decided to use this was how the red in the stain was going to affect my white pain......0.o! The brown stain that I used before didn't seem like a big deal, the red one...yeah.....I wasn't feeling it after I used it. A little to late to go and change it.

I'm calling that color "ugly adobe pink."

It's awful! It looks awful, and I didn't spend this kind of time working on this for it to turn out ugly adobe pink! Minga! I'd better come up with a solution, and come up with one FAST!

You can't half ass a stain job, if you do it you've got to REALLY do it all.

What better way to get into the small parts of this box then with Q-tips! Pretty handy dandy if I do say so myself! They really did the trick!

See it looks nice!

Silver! Silver paint was the answer!

So I thought long and hard about my ugly adobe pink issue, and since I used gold metallic marker on the tags I figured that I could use silver acrylic paint on the box. I wear a lot of white metal jewelry so I thought that was a nice fit to my "oh crap that's not good" moment. I like metal and wood so this worked! I swear if I ever win the lottery I think I'm going to take up furniture making as a hobby.

The bottom drawer, love the pull!

So there are two things about this box that needed some help. One was that it didn't come with a bottom drawer pull. So I went back to Hobby Lobby (seems to be my home away from home lately) and searched thru their pulls. They have SO MANY lovely ones to choose from it was really hard to make a decision, but in the end I did make one and I think it really looks nice!

Side view....

The second issue is that the top of the box lid does not sit flush with the bottom part of the box. It needs a latch. I went to Ace Hardware and picked up a latch, but it's too small. For right now it doesn't necessarily NEED a latch, so for the time being it's staying as it looks right now. After Mitch gave it 2 layers of Polyurethane (Thanks Babe!) it's ready to go up into our room, and rest on my side of the dresser till the damn cat decides to jump up there, and knock it off. 0.o Unfortunately I'm not joking... the little buggar!  

Front View...

So there you have it! My jewelry box; my design that started out in one direction, and found another one along the way. I'm pretty happy with it. *insert big cheesy grin*