This Weather is Total Crap ...

It bears repeating: This weather is total crap. Yes, yes .. I know it's Michigan. And yes, I knew what the weather was like here when I opted to leave the warm, sunny shores of beautiful downtown Burbank to come back to this (sometimes) God-forsaken place but the siren call of family was loud and strong. Besides, in LA you don't have basements (active seismic faults + basements = THINGS WHAT ARE BAD) and I probably wouldn't have my awesome sewing/crafting area which means no blog which means you, dear readers, wouldn't be bored a few times a month when I bother to post. You might actually have lives. You're welcome. For performing the service of sending you my blog. You love me. It could be worse - I could just post links to Pinterest and then where would you be??

The Empress. 25 seconds. And I would've kept pinning if it hadn't been for that pesky kid!

Anykaboodle ... I'm sitting in the Science Complex at school, wasting time between my Earth Science Exam (I could really give a crap about rocks and stuff. I like chemistry.) and my chemistry methods class, which I love. So, I thought I'd at least start an update on my latest projects.

The most awesome American Girl Doll cabinet is not finished. In fact, it is anti-finished. We went backwards. It now qualifies as a negative (-) project. First of all, decoupaging proved to be not even a little bit of an attention holder for my darling ADHD girl. Especially if the TV was on. Which it was. She watched every single Charlie Brown special available to her through Netflix. At one point, I heard her yell, "CAN'T YOU HEAR? HE DOESN'T LIKE YOU, PATTY! LEAVE HIM ALONE!!" I almost dropped my bobbin. Plus, the decoupage medium she was using was one I made and it wasn't working. And the real stuff is spendy so I didn't want to use it on a whole cabinet. The fabric squares were bubbling up and weren't drying flat and it looked hideous. BUT! Never fear - I wet down what we had and Em scraped it off with a putty knife and we decided to just paint it a few shades darker than her walls. We haven't started painting yet, but we'll start soon. It's still gonna be awesome.

But my latest project is finished!

I don't often wear jewelry. I have a necklace that I wear everyday that has a cross, a heart, and a camel pendant on it. The heart and cross are so that I never forget that no matter how bad it gets, God loves me and it will be OK. The camel is because I love camels. Dromedaries, not bactrians. Dromedaries are the one-humped kind. But I digress.

I don't often wear jewelry because my jewelry is all shoved into two really small tchotchke boxes. It finally got on my nerves enough that I snapped. I started off by hopping on Pinterest (see?) and looking around for jewelry storage ideas. There were some nice ones, but I wanted three things: 1) Cheap to make. 2) Pretty much instantaneous to make. 3) Easy to make. When I didn't find anything that fulfilled all of these requirements, I came up with something on my own. But I was missing a vital tool - a staple gun. My stepmother in law just said to me, "What self-respecting girl doesn't have her own staple gun?" This kind which was not a good thing. Off I went to Lowe's with Em and Captain Hubby and bought myself a staple gun and 5000 staples with the intent of using THEM ALL.

Every self-respecting girl needs a staple. Every non-self-respecting girl needs a box of condoms.

Then it was off to Joann's, armed with my coupons, in search of burlap, ribbon, and a cork board. I wanted to hang it in my bedroom, so I chose red burlap. I got a 16" x 23" cork board, and some red grosgrain ribbon. On Saturday night, Captain Hubby had to work on some gaming stuff and I wanted to work on this, so we spent time together in the basement, each of us doing our own nerdy thing.

Students must bring all materials to class the first day.

I started off with an 18" x 24" cork board I got for 50% off at Joanns PLUS my 15% teacher discount so it was super cheap. I decided on red burlap because my bedroom quilt has pieces of red and red is my favorite color so there you go. I went with burlap because the holes in the weave would be big enough for my French hook earrings to go through. I wrapped it around the back, starting in the middle of a longer side and working my way out to the corners, pulling as tight as I could without unraveling the burlap. It can unravel easily. I made it around all four sides, trimmed the excess, and vye-oh-lay! My covered cork board.

It ain't no sack for potatoes, but it's made of burlap and it will hold stuff.

The front looked unfinished and I didn't like it. Having approximately 12,000 spools of various grosgrain ribbon, I went ahead and jumped out on that creative ledge and chose ... RED.

Red ... the burlap of empty cork boards.

I know, I know. Bold choice for me. Monochromatic red. I was also determined to use my staple gun for the whole project, so I stapled the ribbon in the corners. Then I realized the staples showed and WE CAN NOT HAVE SUCH THINGS! BAD AESTHETIC! NO STYLE! And I realized that I was not going to get out of this project without using my glue gun. So I grabbed it and then I grabbed ... oh. You know what I grabbed.

 MAH BUTTONS!!

I love my buttons.

But, I forgot to take a picture of the set-up I chose. It was late. On a Saturday night. I was pretty brain dead by that point. Well, the hangers got covered up by the burlap, so I had to figure out how to hang the thing up. I found my solution in my braided cotton twine. I knotted it and then stapled the crap out of it to the back of the cork board.

You will be hanged from the board until you are worn.

I decided to have it hang portrait-style that way my necklaces wouldn't hang off the board. Fortunately - or unfortunately - I don't have very many earrings so I got to use lots more space for my necklaces. I hung those with little screw-hooks.

And all the while I was thinking, "I need a necklace that matches _____! And more earrings." Captain Hubby disagrees. Or he doesn't read my Amazon wish list cause I had earrings RIGHT THERE!

And with that, my jewelry is organized! This only took about an hour to make. It took way longer to sort and reorganize my jewelry. Of course, that might have been because the TV was on. Like mother, like daughter. Only instead of Charlie Brown, I was watching "King of the Nerds". But I got it sorted and realized I had two problems. Well, I have lots of problems, but only two in regards to this project.

1) I have too many watches that are broken and unworn. I need to get on that. Most of them just need their faces buffed and a new battery. Much like me.

2) I did not plan for a way to hang/display my post earrings. So they got dumped back in the jewelry box.

3) I have quite a number of rings and pendants - something else I didn't plan for. See above re: jewelry box dumping.

4) I don't know how to count.

I might end up making another board to match this one so that I can come up with a way to handle my post earrings, rings, and pendants. I think they will look awesome on my bedroom wall. I haven't painted my bedroom yet, so I didn't want to hang my awesome new jewelry board on my grody ole walls, so it's hanging in the bathroom right now. Once I paint my walls and get my bedroom looking cute, I'll re-hang them and post new pictures.

It's funny ... I started this post at the beginning of February, but just got around to posting it. I suck. Someone should pay me to do this. Anyone? Bueller? Pay the nice lady to craft and write about it? they made like, 17 networks and cable channels based on crafting - a girl can't get a little payday?

Rude.

Love to all.
The Empress