How to make Jewelry and makeup organizers

My goal this year was to make my home a home of order. 

I seem to make this resolution EVERY year, which doesn't speak much of my yearly progress. I am only a failure if I give up, right?

My recent project focused on tackling the clutter and chaos in my bathroom.

Everything was kept in a little plastic drawer unit that sat on my counter. 

It looked awful and wasted my time.

I hated digging through my makeup containers trying to locate a specific product. 

My jewelry was tangled. 

I needed to get everything off my counter space into the vertical space.

This was my solution:

I love how everything is orderly and accessible in a hurry (which is really helpful Sunday mornings when I have only 10 minutes to get ready for church- gotta love those early-morning meetings or choir practices!).

It really streamlines my mornings, and I like the visual appeal of this system.

This is a tutorial for how I made my bathroom organizers.

I found two matching frames at the thrift store and re-purposed them. 

(Editor's note: I love snagging good frames at the thrift store! The uglier the print is, the cheaper the frame is. There are some fantastic frames holding ugly faded kitten prints. I paid $4 for each of these frames. If you pick up frames for a project, be sure to check the joining at the corners. That's the only part of a frame that can fail.) 

The frames were an ugly color, so I repainted them with a copper spray paint. There was no primer necessary since the paint I chose would adhere to any surface (Even plastics! You'll see why this is cool farther down.)

I wanted an aged look, so I applied a wash with Burnt Umber acrylic paint onto the frame, quickly buffing the paint off the raised scroll-work with a cotton rag to make it stand out. 

The directions are a bit different for the two organizers. To read about the jewelry organizer, scroll down a bit. 

Here is how I finished the make up organizer.

Nathan cut out a piece of sheet metal to fit inside the frame so I could organize everything with magnets. (Be sure you don't buy aluminium sheet metal- the magnets won't stick if you do.)

This was the most expensive part of the project. I was surprised how expensive sheet metal can be. I think I paid $20 for it, but we didn't use the entire sheet. Maybe if you buy sheet metal someplace other than Lowes you can get it cheaper.

(The leftover metal is going to be installed inside our kitchen cabinet doors. Why? To store all the to-do lists, school announcements, and artwork that normally clutter the fridge. )

I wrapped a pretty batik print fabric around the metal and glued it into place. 

I glued magnets onto the backs of my makeup compacts so they would stick to my organizer. This was super easy and pretty quick to accomplish. My Littles were so eager to help with this part.

I wanted my brushes to also be stored on the frame, so I made a pretty container for them. 

Can you guess what I used? 

It's a plastic frosting container that I spray painted copper. Ta-Da! 

I glued several magnets on the back like this:

And viola! One gorgeous organizer was done!

The jewelry holder was a bit different to create. 

It doesn't need the sheet metal background. Instead I spray painted some hardware cloth with copper paint to match the frame. I cut it to size and just placed it inside the frame on top of the fabric. 

I purchased some S-hooks from the hardware section of Lowes and painted those as well. I just popped them onto the hardware cloth and hung my necklaces. Ta-Da! 

The total price tag for these organizers was around $37. 

Reclaimed frames- $8

Sheet metal- $20

Copper spray paint- $5

S-hooks- $1

Magnets- $1

Fabric- Free, from my fabric stash

Hardware cloth- Free, from our barn

An organized bathroom- Priceless.

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