When Pinterest actually delivers: The story of a [fairly] simple jewelry storage DIY

I wouldn't say that I have a ton of jewelry, but I do have enough that it started to take over my bedroom to the point that I was ready to go all Marie Condo on it's ass and purge the whole damn collection. I used to store most of my jewelry in several bowls and plates I've collected over the years as souvenirs from my various trips, but having a bunch of bowls on my dresser was not doing any wonders from my sanity. I tend to gravitate towards clean surfaces. On the flip side, I knew if I used a jewelry organizer that gets hidden away in a closet, I would forget to put it on. I came across a DIY on Pinterest a year ago and knew I wanted to try it for myself. It took me awhile to commit, but I'm super happy with the result! 

I did this DIY over the holiday break, so if you happened to be following along on Instagram Stories back in December, you'd know that I ran into a few hiccups along the way. To start, I bought a pack of wooden blocks, saw tooth picture hangers and Gorilla Glue from Michael's. I already had the wooden skewers from a project I never got around to years ago. I also already had green and gold paint in my craft bins. To give some context here, I enjoy a good ol' fashion DIY and have a ton of craft supplies just laying around. As anyone who DIY's knows, you buy supplies to make one bracelet and you're left with 34 extra hooks and 12 feed of chain you don't need. I just hold onto all of the scraps from my various projects, since you never know when it will come in handy, and 8 years later, you've basically got your very own Michael's back storage room hidden in your closet. 

I started the project by painting the wooden skewers gold and the wood blocks green. To ensure it was really opaque, I did two coats of each color. I then hammered the saw tooth picture hangers to the back of the wooden blocks and used the Gorilla Glue to adhere the wooden skewers to the wooden blocks. Seems simple, right? Well, the hiccup with this project is that when I went to hang the blocks on the wall, the saw tooth picture hangers bump out, leading the wooden blocks to hang on a downward angle, rather than flush against the wall. I may not have many gifts in this world, but I will admit I am pretty handy and quick on my feet when it comes to DIY projects, so I decided I would need to screw the blocks into the wall to get them to be flush.

I ended up removing the saw tooth picture hangers from the back of all the blocks. I then drilled a pilot hole through all the wooden blocks so the wood didn't split. After that, I was able to just drill a screw through the pilot hole and right into the wall. I dabbed a bit of green paint on the the head of the screw and part one was done. The second hurdle was getting the wooden skewers to adhere to the blocks. Yes, I could have just used the Gorilla Glue again, but Gorilla Glue is very wet and takes a decent amount of time to dry enough to be secure. Since I needed to secure the wooden skewers to  blocks that were already on the wall, gravity would be working against me. I decided to hot glue the center of the skewer to allow the wooden skewer to stay on the wooden block long enough for the Gorilla Glue to properly dry. I would have just done hot glue as the only adhesion product, but given the weight of the jewelry, Gorilla Glue is much more secure. 

The last part of this project was the wooden bar with hooks to hold my necklaces. I got a pack of cup hooks and the wooden bar from Michael's with the rest of the supplies. I painted the wooden bar gold at the same time I painted the wooden skewers, and then just spaced out the hooks and screwed them in by hand. Since the saw tooth picture hangers were also a problem for the wooden bar, I just screwed the bar directly into the wall and dabbed a little gold paint over the screw heads.

I think my spacing of the blocks on the wall is a little wonky, but it didn't bother me enough to redo the placement and add more holes to the wall. All in all, I'm happy with how the project turned out. Our apartment has a little "hallway" between our bedroom and living room, so these are just screwed on the outside of my closet in that hallway. Usually the hamper is on the wall to the right, under the map, but for the sake of these photos, I thought it wise to spare you the image of my dirty underwear and socks thrown about. You're welcome.

How do you store your jewelry? Do you think its worth it to display it or do you have it tucked away and out of sight?