Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Adventures In DIY - Nail Polish Shelves

I love to take on projects.
They never turn out right.
Even when I actually finish them.

So I will be posting some DIY's that I'll be undertaking to show you folks out there who may be too afraid to take on some challenges that if I can do it, you can certainly do it too. I'm not great. I don't have all the tools I need all the time. But I do what I can and I'm going to start documenting as best I can.

In our new home here in Texas, there is some potential fun to be unlocked. My room has sections of "unfinished" areas due to remodeling over the years and the passing of the house from my wonderful great aunt and uncle to "us". I am not in a hurry to finish the parts that are undone, because I want to take my time and make little touched as fun and interesting and personalized as possible. One of the first things I wanted to do was add some shelves to a section of exposed beams in order to display nail polish. This craft was born of necessity. Over the years, my mother, my grandmother, myself and now my daughter have all bought gallons of nail polish. Up until now we have always stored them in tackle boxes. But when I started thinking of how I wanted to decorate my new room, I started to allow my inner child to play. This is one area of post-divorce life that can be spun into a positive for me. I can decorate my room as goofy or girly or romantic as I want. I looked at lots of different ideas but really I kept coming back to one of my favorite things. Rainbows. I love rainbows. They are so magical and colorful, and I looooove color. In my prayers at night, one of the things I always take time to thank God for is color. What would the world be without color?

So, inspired by the rainbow and in need of some inexpensive decorating ideas I started to think. One of the first things I came up with was displaying our massive nail polish collection. Insta-rainbow. I looked up dozens of ways to display nail polish but everything I saw was expensive. Eventually I settled on adding the shelves I spoke of earlier. I went to Home Depot and found some inexpensive wood, had my dad chop it up and then I painted it. I decided to paint all the shelves a different color. (rainbow!) I'm going with a more flashy/less primary colored rainbow. Today I finally got all the shelves painted and put in place and started adding the nail polish. My daughter started out helping, but this project ran LATE. I turned around and she was konked out.

My daughter helping to organize the polishes
I will admit that I have rushed a bit through this project. I wanted to hurry and get something up on the walls. We use our nail polish every day. So the sooner I could get this project done with, the better. I have some before and after pictures, but I can't honestly say that it's DONE done. I still have 2 sections of shelf and a side wall that need some color. I am thinking of ModPodgeing something fun onto them. But for now, here's what we've got. I would "guesstimate" that I spent about $25.








3 comments:

  1. how many bottles of clear top coat does one need??

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  2. cute! can you paint the brackets the same color as the shelf that sits above it? decoupaging some fabric/paper to the back wall would be cute...or a metallic/mirror effect??? looks great!

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  3. Good question about the clear coat. lol. Like I said, this is a collection that has grown over the years. Most of those bottles are on their last drips of polish, so some MORE top/base coat will probably be coming soon.

    I LOVE the idea of mirroring the background of the shelves. I'll have to look into that. I can paint the little brackets. Well...maybe. After I finished the shelves I told my daughter she could play with all my left over paint. LOL. I don't know if I have any left now. Luckily I got each of those colors from Joanns Fabrics for $0.59. So another trip may be in order.

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