A lot of you have probably seen the tutorial I did on making an eyelash storage solution in the shape of a yummy cake. Well with the direction my house decorating kick is heading the whole cake thing doesn’t really go with my theme. The limited bench space also doesn’t leave much room for a several layered cake so time to find a solution which was pretty and also space saving.
This is what I came up with:
It can be hung on the wall, I can see my lashes at a glance and it takes much less effort to put everything away. This is an awesome solution for girls that have a lot of lashesSo tutorial time!
What you need:
Cardboard
Lace
Sticky tape (the type of tape is important)
Glue gun
Clear plastic or plastic wrap
Pretty wrapping paper or fabric
Cut the cardboard to the shape and size you want the finished product. Make sure there is enough room for all of your lashes, no point going to all this effort and then having no space for future purchases! ^_^
Measure and cut enough wrapping paper to cover the front of the cardboard. From this point the photos have a bit of glare on them unfortunately because the paper I was using is slightly reflective.
Fold the edges over and tape in place…
Fold over the other sides and tape too…
Now it’s time to cover the whole thing in clear plastic or cling wrap. This will protect it from any water that happens to splash there.
Tape the edges of the plastic over and around the back too.
Now you should have something like this:
Lay out your eyelashes and decide how many rows of pairs you have room for. I decided on three.
It’s now time add the part which will hold the lashes in place: wide strips of tape sticky side out. You need to be careful about what kind of tape you use, it needs to be sticky but not so sticky that you can’t get the lashes back off! Gaff and duct tape are too sticky, you want to use something like this clear plastic tape which is not particularly sticky. I suggest testing it out on an eyelash you don’t want anymore. It should hold the lashes securely when you put a corner on but it should not be at all hard to remove them by gently pulling the corner which is not attached.
For each row of lashes I put down 1 strip of tape, sticky side up.
Then fold the edges around the back and tape them im place. So you now you have 3 sticky stripes which are almost invisible.
To decorate it a little more I added a border of lace using the glue gun to hold it in place.
You could also do this same idea in an ornate picture frame just taking the glass out so you could access the sticky strips easily.
Last thing to do is add on the lashes! Lightly press the inside corners of them into the tape, you really don’t need much pressure at all and certainly not enough to disturb the curve of the lashes. Done!
And this is it in action in my bathroom!
It fits the current tone of my bathroom more than the cakes do and takes up so much less space! Do you all like the cakes or the board better?
I think this project is one of those ones that pretty much every primary school ever attempts but I thought I would try to update it a bit!
What you need:
Old toilet rolls or paper towel rolls cut to a similar size
Scissors
Glue gun or tape
Paper glue/glue stick
Scalpel/exacto knife/really sharp knife
Tea light candles
Pretty paper
White paint
So the first step is to cover your cardboard roll in pretty paper using the glue stick. Unfortunately this made it really hard to see what I was doing in the photos so I will use a plain roll so you can see things clearly then show the finished paper covered product.
So glue the paper securely all over and wrap it around like this. I used an old envelope ^_^
Ok once your paper is secure and dry it’s time to make the lantern! You can see from where I’ve drawn in pen below where you should cut. The line in the middle is where we will start making the cuts then the two dots are to mark where will eventually put little slits.
Use your scalpel to make a cut along the first line! Please be very very very careful when using a knife like this!
Now continue around the tube making more cuts parallel to the first one around 1cm apart. Keep going until you reach where you started.
Now make small snips around both ends around 1cm long, you should have something like this:
Next it’s time to fan the whole thing out. Gently push around the middle from the inside.
Keep pushing and use the ends to smoosh it together…
Once you push it out you should be able to create a fold and have something like this:
Now at one end fold all of the little tabbed pieces outwards 😀
Taadaa!
On the other end, fold all the little tabs inwards:
Use your glue gun or tape to hold them all in place. This is going to form the base which prevents the tea light candle from just falling out the bottom haha XD
So from the side it looks like this…
And this is what it looks like with the paper. Mine looks pretty dodgy because I was originally planning on painting it so I didn’t think to the the paper on until after it was made >_<
If your roll has brand names printed on the inside you can use the white paint to go over them. In fact you could paint it any colour you like! I didn’t bother doing it completely because this was a test run.
Now pop the tea light candle through the top opening…
And you’ve got a lantern!
Obviously you should be careful when lighting it as it is made of completely flamable materials but they make very pretty decorations and I can imagine hundreds of them strung up to my roof would look AWESOME!
Now that it’s getting chilly again here, last week I decided to get out the big fluffy jacket that I customised last year. We don’t have a huge amount of space so it had been squished up the back of my closet during the Summer and really needed some TLC! After giving it a thorough hand wash and leaving it to dry completely as I had suspected the faux fur became matted and pretty gross so I set about cleaning it up and getting it back to it’s former glory ^_^
You can see it just after drying on the left and after I finished fixing it on the right:
And again left-bad, right-good.
The first thing I did was sprinkle a little rose scented talcum powder (or whatever the version is that doesn’t contain actual talcum etc) through the strands of faux fur. This helped to loosen the hairs up and prevent them from getting caught on each other.
After making sure the powder had gotten through evenly I used my hair brush (which has short nylon bristles) to gently separate the strands. To begin with I brushed in the same direction as the pile but this didn’t catch the smaller pieces of hair so I found that making small circular motions provided the best result.
As faux fur is essentially plastic how well it can handle brushing will depend on the quality it is, think of it as being the difference between brushing a really cheap shiny wig and one made from nicer matt fibres.
A close up of after:
Good as new! I generally try to give the pile a going over with the brush once a week because faux fur has a tendency to leave little hairs everywhere no matter how careful you are or how any washes it’s been through. You can see how much of the pile came out in the brush, I don’t want to be breathing that in every time I put on the jacket *_*
I’ve never lived somewhere cold enough that I needed to do stuff like this, do you guys have seasonal rituals like changing the clothes in your closet? *winter noob* hahaha!
Nautical prints and things have been big on my mind lately so I’ve been trying to accumulate more accessories that I can add into my outfits. After Lee suggested that I make a wrapped yarn bangle from left over rainbow yarn from my year’s worth of hat I decided that would be a good crossover project 😀
This is the bangle I ended up with:
What you need:
Yarns of different colours and textures. I used thick light blue and very thin white
Red ricrack
Lace
Hot glue gun
Scissors
Cardboard tube, I found this one inside a ball of crochet yarn and it’s the perfect size!
Foam/stuffing
Felt (optional)
Tape
The foam I used was cut from the end of one of those latex foam memory pillows but you could use regular stuffing too.
Roughly arrange/tape the foam around the cardboard tube. It doesn’t need to be perfect because when you wrap the yarn around that will even it all out.
Tape the end of your main colour of yarn to the inside of the tube.
Start wrapping XD I decided to make things a little more interesting by wrapping the yarn on an angle.
You can see that if you keep the yarn at an even tension it will squish the foam into a uniform shape.
Keep wrapping….
and keeeeeep wrapping…
Eventually I ran out of the blue yarn and there were still a bunch of holes which were very unattractive. So I wiggled the yarn into sections this:
You can see above that I marked the sections with some crochet chain, I was planning to use all of that but it ended up looking terrible so I undid it and replaced with regular thin white yarn:
To give it a more nautical feel I laid out some red ricrack over every 3rd stripe.
As there wasn’t enough to wrap it properly, I hot glued it in place. This is what happens when I don’t have the cash to replenish my crafting stash XD I’m down to odds and ends of everything!
Lastly I glued a strip of lace on the inside of the top and bottom to add a girly touch.
And that’s it! If you wanted to make it neater you could glue a section of felt on the inside to hide all of the loose ends of yarn…. but I’m out of matching colours of felt too hahahaha! I’ve done a lot of nautical yarn related things lately, I even knitted a skirt for myself, I’ll actually have to put them all in an outfit and post that one of these days!
I’ve have a bit of a nautical obsession lately 🙂 These were my nails for the week before I cut them. Apologies for the poor quality of this video, I’m still working out the best settings and lighting for shooting theses that doesn’t end with a gigantic file size.
I get a lot of storage related questions in my email, at least one a week and they are usually along the lines of “how can I store X without shoving it in a drawer?”. So this post is majorly overdue and I feel quite guilty in letting it drag out this long but I have been trying to think of a way to do this as well.
I’m always a little wary of how much I share on the internet because my house is a very personal place, only my absolute best friends have ever visited and even then I invite people over sparingly because I like my privacy very much.
The way my apartment is set up I have very limited storage space so every little bit has to count. In the bedroom we have a large mirrored built in wardrobe but even though there is lot os space it’s 50% useless because one of the door opens to a wall which hides the water heater and another of the doors opens to a hanging space which isn’t wide enough to actually hold coathangers -_-‘ I swear whoever designed this apartment had never actually lived inside an apartment.
So once all of that is blacked out, my wardrobe space is effectively reduced to this:
The storage here has been a work in progress ever since we moved in as I experimented with the space and found out what worked and what didn’t. Today I’ll show you what worked and what didn’t in this space and if you guys like this post I might do something similar with other areas in the apartment.So here’s a quick run down of the above:
On the left you can see where I hang my clothes, shirts/skirts up the top and dresses/jackets down the bottom.
Below that is where I was keeping my books stored on a shallow shelf, that wasn’t working because I needed to get them out quite often so I moved them to the shelf at the very top of the cupboard which until then was holding random junk I hadn’t found a place for yet…
Which brings us to the top shelf holding random junk I hadn’t found a place for yet! Most of the stuff up there were bits and pieces left over from when we moved in. Since this photo I have cleared it out, replaced it with my books and boxes of keepsakes we can’t seem to get rid of.
Under that we have a set of 3 shelves. I will go into detail about each shelf below but one thing to note is that I have attached stick on hooks to the sides to hold scarves and hats. I no longer keep the hats in this area because I now have too many but this is a really good way to display them if you’ve only got a couple!
Lastly under the shelves there are 4 sets of drawers holding important things like stockings, pajamas/roomwear and unmentionables. ‘Nuff said ^_^
Below you can see a closer picture of the three shelves.
So let’s go through shelf by shelf and have a look 😀
The bottom shelf holds most of my jewellery. Other than a few prized pieces most of this has been sourced from junk stores but even though it’s not expensive it’s all very pretty so I want it displayed. Also I tend to be forgetful so if it’s not displayed to remind me I’ll never wear them XD
The main storage points to note here are:
Silver tray to hold bracelets and wrist items
Homemade stands to display necklaces
Shelving at the back to hold neck ties, gloves, socks and stockings
With shelves that are quite deep like these the best way to get the most out of your storage is to add levels. If you just pile stuff in then you will have wasted the whole top half! I took advantage of the space by having the tray down low, the necklaces midway and the shelves right up to the top. The shelves are made up of the cute round box that my favorite tea set came in, similar the box at the back of this picture.
The shelves are the most packed area and as they are quite shallow they are perfect for holding (and displaying at a glance) things like stockings, gloves and scarves. I keep the things I use the most (scarves and handkerchiefs) in the middle because it’s the most accessible area. The stockings and socks I keep here are generally the ones I don’t use very often but are still pretty enough to be on display. It’s kind of annoying to get things out of those areas so I keep my every day stockings in the drawers below.
At the bottom of this shelf is a silver serving tray I picked up a thrift store for 20c. This area is the key to my jewellery storage because if I’m in a hurry it becomes a dumping ground but still looks relatively nice. I keep bangles, bracelets and watches here because they can be easily picked out when getting dressed and are still displayed very nicely. When you have a lot of similar colours and elements like pearls and diamantes stuff looks pretty even when it’s all in a big messy pile. In fact I’m sure if I took a close up picture and stuck a vintage filter someone would call it art ;P
Now moving up to the second shelf!
This area basically holds pretty things and trinkets that are too nice to be shoved in a box but also not particularly useful and therefore not going to be touched on a day to day basis.
Again here I’ve created levels to utilise all of the available space. Up the back are my Japanese magazines, next to them is a lovely box my tea set came in which is full of small toys and trinkets. That is used as a shelf for one of my hats which has other smaller accessories that I never use but don’t want to throw away inside it. In the front half of the shelf from left to right are:
A collection of small toys including my absolute favorite Sylvanian Families in a picnic setting.
Trinkets including a broken but adorable clock, collection of oversized diamantes and a ship in a bottle that my Grandfather made.
A velvet necklace display holding my nicer necklaces, behind which is space for small accessories like a pink bow belt.
Now the very top shelf is fairly self explanatory… bags… lots of bags.
I don’t have a huge number of bags compared to a lot of girls but storage for them is still important. Unlike a lot of girls I also don’t change my handbag very often, I really only go between two depending on how much stuff I need to take. The two that I use regularly live on my dresser while these are all of the left over ones that I bought thinking I would use but never actually do >_<
When we lived in our previous house I had one of those bag hanger things that is like a strip of fabric that hangs off a hook with various clips (sorry couldn’t find a photo of one) but it was so bulky and awkward that I ditched it here in favor of the shelves.
The largest bags get filled with either smaller bags or my traveling gear (like luggage tags, travel wallet etc) because that’s pretty much the only time they get busted out hahaha! It also helps the floppier bags to stand rigid and be stacked like books. Smaller bags like the fluffy bunny one get stacked on top of the big ones so it’s like a solid cube of bags 😀
So I guess that concludes the first storage area in my house! Hopefully this post was useful and answers a bunch of questions and requests, if not feel free to leave them in the comments. Or tell me your favorite storage tips for living in a small apartment, I would love that too!
Writing this post was actually a lot more fun than I was expecting so if you would like me to turn it into a series just let me know ^_^
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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