For the Hoard: Organizing Jewelry Making Supplies

Mmm. You know that feeling when you have a specific project in mind, and you rush to grab your needle nose pliers...only to see that they've suddenly run off to Narnia along with your library card and a couple of mismatched socks?

Yeah, my craft supplies, once neatly kept in their little cubbies, have since expanded into random boxes and bags throughout the house.  To start, here's the round-up of the jewelry making supplies (or what I estimate to be about 85% of it):

Mugghhhh.  Anyway. I'm going to slowly attempt to re-organize my hoard, taking a general inventory of my stash in the process.  Going through this first try was interesting - "Oh! when did I get this charm/tool/insert random-object-here ?!" Dangerous. Hoarding runs in my family, guys. I gotta keep it under control.

First I re-purposed my button tray to hold all the findings. Jump rings, earring posts, chains, etc.   Shaking this box will just move things from one cell to another, so I decided to keep everything in little baggies to minimize random things flying out upon opening.

For the second box, a standard photo-box, I've got pre-made jewelry kits, wire, little zip up baggies, a wigjig, a knot maker, various pliers and cutters, and a box of charms.

Charms were removed from any cardboard packaging, and were also individually bagged.

And the last, most tedious box: beads.  I used an old mooncake tin and many of my mom's old film canisters.  I stored beads in film cans before, but with the lids on you could never tell what was inside.
This time I bagged the contents, and left the lids off. I'm still not convinced this is the best method, but we'll see how it works out.

Anyway, I was able to save a lot of space by removing all the bulky packaging and switching to baggies instead.  I also took a lot of the saved broken jewelry, salvaging the pieces I wanted and removing the rest.

Though it's not very pretty (no coordinated, matching boxes), it is nice and neat, back in its cubby!

How many cubbies left? =_="

How do you store your jewelry making supplies? Any good tips?

New Windows

For our very first major-home-improvement, we had our windows replaced.  All 19 of them!

The old windows were single-pane, cracked and warped and leaky.

Melted glass

Warped doors that wouldn't shut.

Cracks.

Anyway, we got three quotes, two which my dad facilitated and one that Sak did. I was too scared to meet with any contractors myself!  In the end we went with one that a friend had referred.  The cost was about $8.5k for 19 window retrofits, three of the windows being fairly large sized.

What's a retrofit?  I didn't know either. But apparently they cut the old window out, and insert a new window over the old framing. This method is about half the cost of a full re-framed window, and is pretty much just as good as a completely re-done window.  We chose retrofits since our exterior is stucco, and a new frame would have involved cutting and re-patching.  You can never perfectly re-patch stucco!

The drawbacks to retrofits is that you end up losing some window sill space, as well as some glass size since there's a lot of vinyl siding to cover up the old frame.

Old window:

New window (siding not finished yet):

See the gaps where the window fits into the old frame?

They put expanding foam in the cracks!

Kinda creepy looking.

And then the next day they finished with the siding.

Final window:

Bathroom window, some window sill room lost, but enough space for small trinkets still :)

Front window, I chose to have some lines in it for curbside visual interest:

Anyway, I really love the new windows! It makes the house SO MUCH quieter. Can't say I miss the crazy blue jay screeching or never-ending neighborhood construction noises.  I'm not sure how much it effects the heating/cooling of the house since it's been fairly normal weather lately, but we'll see once winter comes!

I also love how easy it is to open and close windows now.  Before it was nearly impossible!

Now, I just need to figure out window treatments. Two years later and I still don't know what to do with them. >.>"

DIY Coat Rack Tree

This could also be titled, "how to be very inept at woodworking". 

Sak has a nasty habit of leaving his jackets on the floor when he comes home.  I have a nasty habit of leaving them in piles on chairs. I've been wanting a coat rack for a while now, and I wanted to make my own, but I had too many holes in my original plan.

The original plan, for kicks, was to make a coat rack that looked like the Pokemon Sudowoodo:

(source)

Yeahhhh, how cool would that have been?! If anyone makes one please give me directions. :D 

But being the beyond novice wood-workers we are, Sak thought it'd be better to use an already made plan. I picked this one from Ana-White, which is a very cute coat rack with branches.  The plan says it's for under $10, but either from bay area inflation or me not picking the right type of wood, supplies were more like $30. :P

Sak finally pulled out the miter saw he got for Christmas in 2011, and sawed some rather perfect looking angle-cuts. So cool! (Though I'll be honest after all the safety training I've had at work, I kept thinking he'd saw his arm off and I'd have to try some serious first aid.)

Yeah. Made him remove the robe too. >.>"

Then Penga-bro came home and seeing as we were doing a man-craft, decided to help out. 

Um. So three engineers do not a construction team make. Though all of us blame shoddy directions (of course, lol), we could not screw it together properly! Either the wood would split, or the screw would break off!

Frustrated, we ended up switching to hammers, nails, and wood glue. >.>"

It looked pretty shoddy, and after I tried wood putty to make it nicer, it looked even worse. Haha!

But we sanded down and made it the best we could..it's not bad from far away.

Spraypaint, and we're done.

See our new rabbit setup in the back? More to come on that :)

Overall, I really like it, even if it is a little bumpy.  There's a couple wiggly branches due to the nails being inferior to screws, but other than that, it works and holds up a good amount of jacket weight.

I wanted to make a few other wood items since we got the saw put together, but I'm told I should stick to paper and fabric crafts until we get some proper wood-working training. :P

Tree Trimming

Other than forking over money, I had absolutely no hand in this tree trimming, but I'm just so excited about how nice it is I had to share. Sometimes it really does pay to hire a professional!

We have about five trees on our property, most of which were getting fairly unruly. We bought tree pruners and a chain saw to try and maintain the trees ourselves, but between spiders (me) and height problems (Sak), we weren't doing a very good job.

On the recommendation of a co-worker, Sak called some pro tree people, got a free quote, and set up an appointment on my regular day off (every other Friday).  And you know how I have phone-call phobia?  Well, that totally extends to contractor-phobia as well. So I did as any responsible (insert sarcasm here) adult would do - I called my mother and begged her to come protect me from myself for the day. On the promise of thrift shopping, she agreed to help me, and did a great job communicating to the three person work crew on my behalf.  I stayed in my room whimpering loudly and folding load after load of laundry. I would do it all again though (with my mom of course), because we have the window view back!

And the curbside tree is so cute now! (I consider this my service to my neighbors. haha!)

And the crazy tree no longer brushes against the deck! (Helps reduce the amount of spiders crawling into my home I hope?)

TEST

We had four trees trimmed for $750.  Home/yard ownership is not cheap, but from what I've heard this was a pretty good price. I'm hoping we won't have to cut the trees again for a while though!

Tansu-style Closet

So ever since we bought the house I've been dreaming of owning a tansu.  Specifically a step tansu, which usually comes in three parts and has loads of storage.

(source)

They are usually ridiculously expensive, and we came this close *pinches fingers* to buying one off Craigslist for $500 a while back.  Unfortunately the seller decided to be a jerk and sell it to someone else after saying we could buy it. Happens.

Anyway, I was in the thrift store with my mom the other day and a cabinet immediately struck my eye!  It wasn't a step tansu, but it was tansu styled.  $120 dollars and one Home Depot truck rental later, and we have a tansu-esque closet!

It's real wood, but I hesitate to call it real tansu since the joints are not dovetailed together like a real one should be (this is glue and nails). Also there are no sliding doors. It's still pretty awesome though, with tri-fold  doors...

Actually, the whole thing makes for a perfect futon closet. (It's original use was an TV closet I believe.)  Sak's parents bought us two twin-sized futons (the kind that lay on the floor) from Japan as a present for housing BIL, so they'll sit in here when all the pieces arrive. (Perfect guest beds!)  Right now we just have the sheets and comforters.

Comforters currently fit quite nicely in the bottom!

Although I'm really digging this massive piece of furniture, Sak was initially pretty mad at me for buying it.  You see, I didn't quite think to measure anything when I bought it..And it doesn't actually fit on the wall very well due to a wall sconce being in the way.

Well. It sort of fits. Haha!

Eventually we'll need to remove the sconce, and I think I'd like to turn the cabinet 90 degrees so it's against the wall perpendicular to its current wall. Still haven't decided. What should I do with the hole the wall sconce will leave though? Do they make covers for those sorts of things?

You never know what random things you'll find in a thrift store. :P

DIY Dishtowel to Pillow Conversion

So this is so simple it probably doesn't need a tutorial, but here it is anyway. Haha!

I found these cute dishtowels at Daiso and decided they weren't really good for actual dishtowels (my Ikea ones are much thicker and absorbent).

So maybe some small accent pillows?

I used two dishtowels to make two pillows, first cutting two squares out of each towel.

Place two squares together, right sides facing.

Sew around the square, leaving a small hole somewhere for stuffing.  Turn it inside out and stuff away!

Once stuffed, sew up the hole.

You could stop here, but I thought mine looked a little too lumpy.  I attempted to top stitch around all four edges, and I think it gives the pillow a little more "shape".

Not bad for two dishtowels and some stuffing.

Though I definitely need some bigger, probably solid colored pillows to go with these.  The poor little guys look teeny tiny on our manstad couch!

Maybe I should sew an actual face on it...

Patio Table Re-Do

Last week Cola-bee posted about revamping her old patio furniture with some spray paint.  Which got me thinking about my own rusty patio furniture. I think her post was an unintended kick-in-the-pants for me to finally do something about this guy:

This is an ikea table Sak and I bought when we first moved in together, and I guess it wasn't meant to be an outdoor table because it didn't take long to rust.

Seeing as we have company coming over (today, actually - happy Independance Day!), the timing was perfect (or perhaps well overdue).

We used red Rustoleum paint since we have some chairs that are already red and it's my favorite color. :P

After I scrubbed it down with some sand paper, hosed the whole thing off, and waited an entire day for the table to dry...I settled in for some spray painting!

Only Sak totally hijacked my project. Way to steal the fun part.

"It's like I'm being a rebel graffiti artist, only...not."  - Sak

We need to get out more.

Anyway, the entire bottle of paint got used up after two light coats.  It was really windy so a lot of the paint blew away while spraying. But two coats seemed to do the trick, so no return trips to the store.

After it dried the next day, the color had dulled a bit, but it looks much better than it did before!

The paint went on nice and smooth, luckily.  We've only spray painted like, twice before - and then only on costumes, so I wasn't sure if we were doing it right.

Yay, company-worthy patio set!

Yet before you think we're classy or anything like that - we still have a set of plastic dumpster-dived chairs. At least they're patriotic, ha!

And I know it's terrible, but I totally have the Team America song stuck in my head.  The infamous, unofficial theme song of Fourth of July?

We're having a barbecue, but I have no idea who is coming since my parents did the inviting. I guess I ought to clean the house a bit and hide my crazy.

Are you doing anything special today? I hope there are fireworks in store for you, that's the best part!