Vintage Jewelry Sale and Chairish Give Away!

Chairish is one of my favorite places to shop for unique vintage pieces (and it's also a super easy place to sell stuff using just your smart phone!).  They recently added a vintage jewelry section and I put up twelve of my favorite treasures this morning.

Coral Bar and Rose Gold Necklace  //  Turquoise Floral Ring  //  Olive Green Bakelite Necklace

Black and White Drape Necklace  //  Italian Mosaic Earrings

Brass and Horn Necklace  //  Bakelite and Turquoise Bangle

Pearl and Satin Bib Necklace  //  Brass Ring  //  Beauty Charm Bracelet

Lion Head Necklace  //  Turquoise Sunburst Ring

I don't usually have a hard time parting with pretty things since I'm always shopping and buying, but some of these pieces were really tough for me to list!! :) This vintage Bakelite and turquoise bangle is pretty much perfection, I think.

(baby bump alert!)

Here's also a link to my collection of more than 50 jewelry pieces from other sellers that I have my eye on. I'm a huge fan of giving antique jewelry for holiday gifts and Chairish has made that easy as pie on all of us!

And most importantly! ---> Chairish is kindly giving away a $150 gift certificate, just in time for the holidays! Go here to enter. Contest ends December 3. Good luck!

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Thank you to Chairish for being a long-time LGN sponsor! Click here to download the super-slick Chairish app!

DIY Necklace Hanger

We decided to block out our weekend and we've got nothing planned but house projects! I am so excited to share one big one in particular (photos coming!), but one small project I want to tackle is making a second one of these little necklace holders I did for my first Domino article project.

I'm running out of space and my necklaces are getting buried, which sort of defeats the purpose of the thing. The good news is it's really, really easy to make one of these hangers and only takes a few minutes, so I can turn a second one of these out in 20 minutes or so.

My inspiration came from this photo below I saw on a cool site that just shares images of closets belonging to really stylish women. I can't remember the name of the site though - do you know it?

In this woman's closet, she use a strip of wood and a series of nails tapped right in. This hanger would be like a five minute project!

I wanted my necklace strip to be painted the same color as my wardrobe units (which is Benjamin Moore's Knoxville Gray), and I wanted tiny brass hooks.

I had a scrap piece of wood laying around that was just the right size. I don't have a photo of this, but I bought some of those picture hangers that you just tap right into wood or a frame. They sort of look like jagged teeth? They're great and so easy to use. After installing those on the back, I painted a first coat on, then I marked out where the hooks would be on the front, spacing them about an inch apart and staggering the rows.

Then I drilled teeny tiny pilots holes with the smallest bit I have. This made screwing in the small hooks by hand about a million times easier!

I touched up the paint with a small brush and then hung the strip of hooks up on the wardrobe wall using the jagged teeth hangers.

The teeth hangers sort of make the strip tilt out a bit, but I kind of like the angle? Or at least it doesn't bother me enough to figure out another way to hang the strip!

What plans do you guys have for the weekend? Any big projects? Here's a sneak peek of what I've got going on... :)

Spray Painted Jewelry Box

I love it when a little spray paint can breathe new life into a old piece of furniture or decor!

I found this beat up vintage jewelry box on eBay for almost nothing (I think it was $10 with free shipping - or something ridiculous). I bought it mostly for the hardware. Isn't that brass beautiful?

The wood was shabby looking though and the brass sort of got lost against the stain color.

I've been so drawn to purples lately, especially shades of lilac. (This room is still a favorite) I found a really beautiful color of spray paint from Rustoleum called French Lilac.

I gently pried off the brass hardware, lightly sanded the wood down and gave the box a few light coats of the lilac spray paint. The color only came in satin finish, which was a little more flat than I wanted here.

I used a high-gloss spray lacquer on top to make the lilac nice and glossy.

It took about a full day for the lacquer to fully dry, but once it was ready, I added the hardware back on.

I love the way the brass looks on the lilac and the way the lilac looks against the gray wardrobe.

Also, a little PSA on the Nate Berkus tray: Basically this whole line was on clearance at my local Target yesterday! I bought the lamp and a second tray.

I'm pretty sure the trays are just resin, but they look and feel a lot like stone. They're so cool and just about the perfect size for any surface.

How was your weekend? I have been travelling for about a month straight now and I am wiped out! We're up at my parents house right now, which is much, much more relaxing than the past few trips I've been on for work, but I'm pretty ready to get home and get back to real life. :)

DIY Blue Opaline Glass

I love all milk glass, but blue French opaline is my favorite. The color is so dreamy and looks beautiful in just about every space.

I've collected a few pieces here and there (this one and this one and even this little one on my desk are still favorites), but opaline is so dang expensive! I drool over collections like these below from Eddie Ross and the home of the owner of Juicy Couture.

I decided to try my hand at recreating the look with a little spray paint for my wardrobe vanity's jewelry drawer.

I went to Goodwill and picked up an assortment of clear glass dishes for about 50 cents each. I tried to get a good mix of shapes, sizes and patterns in the glass. Some of these are butter dishes, there are a lot of saucers and little bowls and even a few ashtrays.

I spray painted just the backs of the dishes. I couldn't use a primer because that's all you would have seen from the front, but the bright blue oil-based enamel spray paint from Rustoleum that I used probably didn't need a primer anyway. I just made sure to wash the glassware really well first, so there was no dirt or grime to prevent the paint from sticking evenly to the dishes.

The trick is to not coat the glassware too heavily, so that lots of light still shines through the sides of the glass. A couple of light and even coats will work perfectly.

If you have any drips inside the dishes, you can scratch them off with a razor blade. You want a crisp edge between the paint and the inner glass surface.

I use the dishes for holding the earrings I wear the most often. There's also a dish for safety pins and a pair of my glasses.

The ashtrays actually work the best for separating stud earrings and the little bowls with rims are perfect for hanging drop earrings with hooks.

I love seeing the "opaline" dishes peeking out from the vanity drawer. The color is so pretty!

Faux-Iron Painted Bust

I've long been a fan of using classical busts in decor. Remember this oldie from Blueprint?

My favorite place to use busts is in a bathroom or a bedroom, for jewelry and accessory storage. How cool does this side table in Lulu Powers' home look with the bust styled with her dad's old hat? Love.

I wanted to use a bust in my little vanity area and I stumbled across this one at Homegoods for about $7. The size and subject were perfect (her hair!), but the antiqued resin finish wasn't what I was after.

A few weeks before I had purchased some of this iron faux finish at Michaels, just on a whim (they had a few in the clearance section for $2 - how could I resist?). I've seen this paint line carried at hardware stores too and they have tons of cool finishes. Their gold is pretty good.

I was a little nervous, brushing on the first coat. The paint is super watery and just sort of looked like cheap black paint. 

But I forged ahead and two coats later I was left with a really cool, chalky charcoal gray that actually looked quite a bit like iron. 

The girls helped me paint the bust and decided to name her Betty, so that's good? I pulled out Beethoven from my stash to give Betty a little company.

It's nice to have a place to toss a necklace down at the end of the day when I'm feeling too lazy to find its spot on the hanging rack (yes, I'm that lazy).