DIY::Salvaged Finds Turned To Jewelry Displays::PART 1

I have always been a Goodwill Stores kind of a gal. Even when I find something there that I don't need but see the $.49 price tag attached, I always seem to be able to justify the purchase. This was no exception when trying to think up new and useful ways to display my jewelry for my upcoming party.


I have spent some of my recent free time getting to know my new neighborhood, which includes the local stores and dives. While rummaging around a Salvation Army store in town, I shopped this little guy: 

I immediately knew what I could do with it, and $.98 later it was mine! So after adding some black paper to it's back to give it less of a meshy look, I looked around my craft room to get some ideas of how to spruce the thing up. I knew just the remedy: paper flowers and brads! 

So a few floral arrangements later... 

And after adding some earrings, too...

We have this:

So, for less than $1 or so, I have a perfectly lovely earring holder. The paper holder also came with a magnet, which I think I will use to label the price for the earrings during the jewelry party. What do you think? 

Next on my list was to find a means to hang some longer necklaces I recently made for the jewelry party.  I remembered that I had some old cork boards we were saving to put up next to our dart board in the basement. Who needs darts when you have lots of jewelry to display? So I pulled them, and some old gift wrap, out of storage...

Turns out the cork boards (which we originally found in a free pile of stuff back in Berkeley) have warped pretty harshly over time, so they needed to be covered STAT!... 

After cutting the paper and taping it's edges down...

I added some torn paper around the border to give it some color, as well as a random flower I found laying the craft room. And VOILA! 

In fact, I used the rest of the torn pink paper to create it's counterpart:

I especially love the floral details: 

Though am not a huge fan of the only interesting push pins I could find in town - where can I get some cute silver matte pins without spending a fortune? 

Up next - how I turned a $.48 find into a necklace and earrings holder, plus a new use for an old lamp! 

I love you, Wednesdays.

Because, seriously, Friday is still 2 days away.

I love you, Wednesdays is my bloggin' attempt at a.) shutting up about my products and sharing the love of others' with others! and b.) sharing sources of inspiration that often stands behind my jewelry and creative process. Every week I take a little walk to Trader Joe's on my lunch break and splurge on a $5.99 bouquet of flowers. When I bring them back into the office, people ask, "Oh, did your husband get those for you?" I laugh, "No! I wanted them so I bought them for myself!" It seems that flowers are so naturally associated with "gift" that it seems odd that someone would buy them for themselves. But why not? Why is it that we rarely every buy flowers for ourselves? Because they die? Because we could grow them on our own but don't have the time? It is for these reasons that the flower IS beautiful! I have become so used to having flowers on my desk that I can see a severe change in my attitude when I finally have to throw them away and am stuck on a flower-less desk for another day. Something about looking at these flowers throughout the day helps keep me balanced. (This flower is one of the few that actually bloomed in our garden this summer - the heat took the rest of them too quickly. RIP, little guys). Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, "The Earth Laughs in Flowers." It goes without saying that, when talking about inspiration, flowers are a no-duh kind of a subject. I have literally typed and re-typed this entry over and over trying to achieve something witty to say about flowers that has not been said before. I guess it's cyclical - flowers do all the talking for us, it seems. And even more so, a picture of a flower is worth a thousand words. I find a lot of inspiration from photos of flowers, since they offer us a closer glimpse into lives cut too short. I usually use my weekly bouquet of flowers in my product photography of jewelry, and it's not ironic that often the products go so well with the flowers - they are often the muse behind many of my color pallet choices :) (pictured: purple Amethyst earrings, $14)

Last weekend I went to a wedding in Minnesota and was thrilled to see the bride having chosen one of the most beautiful, and temperate, of all flowers as her theme: the hydrangea. The pom of a flower was everywhere, even in the bride's hair, and really made alive all that was the wedding and reception. I took a stalk home with me after the wedding to attempt to press some of the petals for the bride, and they turned out surprisingly well, considering how very delicate its many petals are.

So today I share with you one of my many inspirations, the hydrangea. Not so much products of the flower, but stunning pictures of it. Although one of these products is a broach - can you spot which one?

JMcGuinness, saranorris, kathelesage, flandersfield

GabrielleKai, tuscanystudios, GabrielleKai, RDINOZ creativeapples, 5eizen, creativeapples, flandersfield Be sure to visit their Etsy shops for more surreal hydrangeia inspiration!

So, what inspires you today?