Put It On A Shelf

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What's the best way to get organized in a small apartment? Get as many spaces and surfaces as you can! Remember our mission to thrift? Our main goal when left that day was to find a bedside table, but we came up short there, and wound up long in the shelving department, and we decided to put those awesome shelves in Justin's apartment. And the kicker? (Cue the heavenly music, please)... they were a piece of cake to install!

Here I am, on the beautiful, fateful day I first eyed my silver shelves... Now, cue the background music, "Silllver shelves.... Silllllvvverrr shhellllvesssss... It's thrifting timmeee in the cityyyyy..." Come on. You totally enjoyed that.

We purchased these shelves without an actual plan for where to put them (but at $12 for all 3 shelves, can you blame us?!).  I considered putting them in the bedroom, which is shaping up to look quite beautiful manly...  but, ultimately, I think I finally realized two things:

Thing Number One:
We all have a part of our apartment or home that is just plain crappy. 

Thing Number Two:
When you love a new piece of furniture, you want to put it in the room you love... but you should put it in your --- you guessed it --- crap room.

What does this mean? It means we decided to put the shelves in the kitchen. The crooked cabinets, old school (and not in a good way) counter top, and please-throw-me-out appliances needed some beautiful company.

We decided to put them above the kitchen sink. There was a large space on the wall, right above the sink, that wasn't being used. The ratio of kitchen items to drawer and cabinet space was depressing (note: that means many kitchen items and very little drawer/cabinet space), so it seemed to make sense to add some beautiful silver (err, I mean manly and industrial) shelves.

In the end, the space looks much better and we've finally got some functional space... not to mention something for our eyes to ponder as we do the dishes.

What we used:

• Shelves
• Level
• Drywall Anchors
• Screws and washers

We Came. We Saw. We Conquered.
 Or... We eyeballed. We measured. We Hung.

We eyeballed a location for the shelves
We weren't very methodical, we just thought about what we could put on them, and how much height  we would need on top and in between

We measured
Center the shelves between the cabinets
With the level on the shelf, mark the location for the anchors

We hung
Screw the anchor into the wall (Tip: line up the shelf after the first anchor to make sure your mark for the second one still lines up)
Put the washers on the screws
Bolt the screws into the anchor

See how they look as though they're not centered? Let's take this as a teaching moment for a typical old Chicago apartment... the cabinets are not centered above the sink. Thus, neither can the shelves.

  

DIY Silver & Gold Hoop Earrings

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Warning: If you love your hoop earrings, you might hate this post. I'm about to defile them by adding gold.

Here's the thing: As my going-on-23-year-old brain can remember it, Silver Hoop Earrings first became "all the rage" when I was in Middle School. Everyone had them. Some were smaller. Some were larger. But, by gosh, if you were a student at my school, you had a pair.

I even remember wearing them a big in high school. But then college... oh, college, you were the bane of the silver hoop trend. You killed it. Suddenly, I didn't see them around quite as much... and I only saw them in jewelry windows at WalMart (which I'm not judging -- didn't I just say I was there in the first place?!).

Moving forward to today... gold and bronze are big parts of my wardrobe. My favorite watch is rose gold. My David Yurman bracelet is silver and gold. I have a few bronze necklaces. It's suddenly okay to mix and match metallics like it was never okay before (or was I missing out on this trend for all of eternity? I should ask my friend Jordan over at ExclusivelyChic...).

So I realized a few weeks ago that, despite owning more than one pair of silver hoops, I was no longer wearing any of them for two reasons... (1) I just wasn't finding them cool anymore... and (2) They always felt weird to wear with other metallics because they somehow just don't mesh in their original solid-silver form.

My solution? Paint them. Using some Superlite Gold Leaf Finishes and a tiny paint brush from CVS (yes, they sell paintbrushes), I hand-painted gold-ish-bronze-ish stripes on one pair of my silver hoop earrings.

It reminds me of Dr. Seuss for some reason... but in a good way.

Here they were, naked and bare, solidly silver without a care in the world...

And here, in this tiny edge of the earring, you can see my reflection... there I am, sitting at Justin's kitchen table, holding up my trusty Nikon, just before I begin to alter everything these poor Silver Hoops know about the world...

My weapons of choice: Superlite Gold Leaf Finishes (from Home Depot), a paintbrush from CVS, and paper grocery bags to protect Justin's table.

Post-painting: The gold leafing dries pretty quickly. I'd estimate that I shot these about 5 minutes after painting. That's a darn good turn around time for a fast-paced person like me.

I know. Beautiful, right? :) I decided not to tape off my painting sections, because I wanted to retain a bit of a handmade edge to them. After all, it's jewelry... and the painting was hand done... so why not let it look that way?!

Ah. And there they are. Sitting in their home (a blue and gold jewelry bowl I just made... stay tuned for the tutorial). Rest tight, little hoops. It's been real.