How refreshing -- necklaces where I can actually find them...

While I was making my earring organizer, I knew I had to do something about my necklaces, too. I have a ton of really long ones, and several with fine little chains or chunky medalions that things get stuck on. And I never wore any of them because they were a giant mess...

Here was my temporary solution, hanging on a few nails beside my earring hanger (which I absolutely adore -- makes picking out jewelry so easy). Still a big mess...

So I signed the hubby up to help me, and we made a very easy -- and inexpensive -- hanger. I used some wood he had leftover. We ended up using a piece 16 inches long and 2.75 inches wide. I had him add some nice edge trimming...

Ahhhh, such a great guy for helping me with all my crazy projects!

We sanded it up and then he drilled holes for my hooks. We left 3 inches on both sides, then added holes for six hooks, 2 inches apart. Here's the only thing I had to buy for this project (got them at Home Depot and they work fabulously):

After my hubby pre-drilled the holes for my hooks, I sanded the whole plaque and painted it with the same color as I did the earring holder (haha, or so I thought; I noticed it's a little darker shade of brown... Oh well). I also sealed it with some polyurethane. I tried out the spray kind and it was great -- much easier to get a smooth finish.

I had my husband use his router to make me some keyhole holes in the back for hanging, and I used two nails to hang this. If that's not an option for you, you can easily find hanging hardware anywhere; I suggest using two instead of one for something as long as this (plus it gets kinda heavy with all the necklaces on there).

The hooks are long enough that I had room to double up my longer necklaces (which keeps them out of reach of the baby fingers) as well as kind of separate the necklaces on the hooks.

See? I have a lot. I may still not wear these frequently, mostly because of grabby baby fingers, but it's so much easier on the eyes and my peace of mind knowing if I do want to wear one, it will be a snap picking it out and putting it on. I won't have to untangle everything to find what I want... Love it!

Plus I needed a special place to hang a pretty amazing gift I got for Christmas. Thanks, Erin! Here's the pictures we forgot to take before I left. :)

A new little buddy...

I've had this little project in the works for a long time, but other things keep getting done first, like presents for this shower or this birthday. But I've finally got my priority projects out of the way, and a big incentive to do some extra sewing -- I finally upgraded the old sewing machine! The old girl was fine but my skills had outgrown her capabilities, and my new one is, well, it's smarter than me! I'm having lots of fun trying it out...

And I'm so glad I finally got this done, because it is *singing* awe-some! And best of all, super quick. :)

And what is this cute little envelope thing? It's my new buddy, my crochet buddy...

Getting everything organized just makes me so happy, and best of all, it put some of my small scraps to good use. All my hooks, nestled in their little pockets, easily found for any project and no longer lumped in the pocket of my yarn bag.

And my scissors fit right in the fold, not sitting in my bag where the baby always seems to find them (yikes! gives me a heart attack every time!).

I even put a nifty little pocket in there for my needles. Love it...

All you need for this project is some scrap fabric, Velcro and bias tape. *Please note on the bias tape: Not sure why I didn't make sure what I was buying when I bought it, but make sure to get the stuff that says "extra wide" and "double fold" on it. It's the stuff that's already folded in half and wide enough for projects like this. I kept going through my scraps and finding the skinny, single-fold stuff that you have to fold in half yourself and turns out super narrow when you do...

Here's the sizes for your pieces:

Sorry, should have ironed that pocket... Anywho, you should have six pieces total: one pocket, one needle pocket (optional), two flaps and two main pieces, one for the inside and one for the outside.

This pocket is sized for about 10 hooks. It depends on the size of your hooks and how many you want, but I ended up with room for 11, sized D through N.

First thing we'll do is the pocket for all your hooks. Fold your pocket in half, right sides together, so it's 8 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall.

With a 1/4 inch allowance, sew one side shut. Yes, just one side...

Then trim the corner on the folded end, and turn the pocket right side out, using something to push out that corner from the inside, making it nice and crisp.

Then place the pocket on the inside piece (on top of the right side), lining it up with the bottom left corner.

Sew it in place along both of the sides, sewing as close to the edge as possible.

Now grab a ruler and fabric marker/pencil. You're going to mark your lines for your hook slots. I was going to have them go from small to big, but I messed up on my markings and didn't want to have to redo them, so my big pockets are mixed in with my smaller ones. But I kind of like it. Either way, for my bigger hooks -- sizes I, J, K -- I made the pocket 3/4". For my biggest, N, I made it just a bit bigger than 3/4". For all the others, I made them 1/2".

Now sew along your lines, making sure to back stitch.

Next we'll do the flap. Grab your two flap pieces and put them together, wrong sides together and right sides out.

Now you're going to round the corners. Having them placed right on top of each other, fold them in half so the short ends are together and use your scissors to round the bottom corner (this way your corners will be the same). You can just eyeball it -- we're going to put bias tape around the edges. If you like doing corners with your bias tape, fell free to leave your flaps rectangular.

Leaving the flaps with wrong sides together, you'll sew bias tape around the short ends and bottom. You'll just open the bias tape and place the edge of the fabric snug in the fold of the tape and sew in place. The rounded corners allow you to keep going without having to stop and fold the tape into making a corner, but you'll still have to do a little bit of finageling (spelling?) with the bias tape around the corners. It was also helpful for me to stop, anchoring the project with my needle by putting it down, lift my presser foot and adjust the fabric around the curved spot.

And see? I still had a little bit of folding around the curves, but just a little. Nothing like doing full-out corners.

Now we need to shape the inside piece. You'll fold it with the hook pocket folding side to side, and the leftover will make the flap for your envelope. Again, you can leave this square if you want to do corners with your bias tape, but I rounded it to make it easier for me.

Set that aside and grab your needle pocket, if you're doing one. You'll also apply bias tape along the top of your pocket.

You can trim the bias tape flush with your pocket because the edges will be folded under. Also fold the bottom of the pocket where you want it and pin it (or you can press it in place -- I was just being lazy/quick).

With the bottom fold in place, you'll figure out where you want your pocket. This is important to line up if you're doing a rounded flap like me, because you don't want it to hang off. So figure out where you want it on your inside piece, then flip it to the left, so its right side is down, and try to keep that left side about where you want your pocket to start.

Next, sew along what is now the right side of the pocket, making sure the bottom fold gets stitched into place as well.

Now you'll fold the pocket back over toward the right, so now you're looking at the right side. Your stitching should hold the bottom fold in place, for the most part, and I just folded under the other side and quickly slid it under my presser foot. I held the fold in place as I stitched it down, but if it's giving you problems, you can iron the fold into place and then sew. I started at the top, right corner, sewed down the side, along the bottom and up the other side. I know the last side was already sewn down, but this gave the pocket a nice, top-stitched look all around instead of just on the side and bottom.

Now you'll put the inside on top of the outside, wrong sides together. Also put the flap in place, and pin everything down. Trim along the sides so all the pieces match exactly along the edges.

Now, if you want to close your envelope with Velcro and you're set on machine-sewing it down, do it here. You'll unpin the two pieces and put your Velcro (the hard, pokey part) on the outside piece, approximately 2 to 2 1/2 inches down from the edge (on the left side, not the rounded side). I somehow always get my pieces placed weird, so I waited and handstitched it in place later.

Now you'll put bias tape around the edges. To make this a little easier, I did a separate piece for the straight edge, then did another piece around the rest.

So here's my piece for the straight edge. I trimmed it exactly with the edges and then sewed it in place.

Then for the rest, I started out by trimming the end of my bias tape into a point, like this...

Then I fold it under before I fold the tape in half. This way you won't have pieces sticking out from your corner and it sits nicer without the extra bulk. I put the fabric edge right into that middle fold and sewed along. Again, I opted for the quicker/lazier way and didn't pin this one in place. But this was easier for me along the rounded edges.

TIP: As you do the rounded edges, open the bias tape and place the bottom half into place against the edge under the rounded part, then using your fingers to keep it in place, fold the top half down. This seemed to be an easier way to make the bias tape conform to the curve of the fabric instead of the fabric bunching to conform to the bias tape. Remember, bias tape has an incredible amount of stretch and should do the stretching instead of your fabric.

Then when I got close to the end, I trimmed this end into a point and folded in under, then folded it in half around the fabric, making sure everything fit in a nice corner and I didn't have any hanging over the end.

Then the last thing to do is the Velcro. I used the small, circular, adhesive ones. You'll place your soft-feeling Velcro in the center of the rounded edge (inside piece) and can machine-stitch into place. If you've already stitched your other Velcro in place, make sure to fold your crochet buddy so you can place the Velcro so it fits together well.

I had placed this one first, so after I had this stitched, I then folded it and placed the other one. The adhesive makes it great to get it right where you want it, but it makes it very difficult for handstitching -- just know you'll need a lot of effort to get your needle through that adhesive stuff. It's helpful if you have something grippy to hold your needle with. I used a whip stitch (good handstitching tutorial here) to tack down all the edges of the Velcro. Not a pretty job, but I used light thread and you can barely see it. :)

And that's it! Now you have this sweet little buddy to hold your needles, hooks and scissors so everything is easy to find and use...

If you like this project, leave me some comments! I'd love to hear from you.

Something for your bling with a twist...

As promised, here's a little fancier version of a jewelry organizer, this one more all-in-one.

This was my friend Keri's idea, and it's brilliant! I made this as a birthday present for my sister-in-law.

You'll need these items:
*a shadowbox frame (a frame with kind of a door on it, deep enough to put things inside -- a wood one)
*fabric
*hot glue gun
*staple gun (optional)
*fiberglass screen
*pushpins

(Sorry, I know I'm using the same pics again, but you don't mind, do you?)

I bought my shadowbox at Hobby Lobby -- even half off it wasn't as cheap as I had hoped, but it really worked well for the project. It also had hardware to sit on a dresser instead of hanging on the wall, just fyi. I bought the screen at Home Depot behind the windows department along the back wall. And I bought these awesome wood pushpins at The Container Store, and then they were too big for my project. :( So I ended up buying some rounded-head pins at Target.

Again, this method is really easy -- you could have this done in an afternoon! First, ditch the glass or plastic. You won't need it.

Next, take out the back/inside of the frame. Mine had a styrofoam pad attached to the back, and I tried to cover it wth fabric without taking it apart. That totally didn't work, so don't be afraid to take it apart! If your shadowbox doesn't have some kind of pad, then I suggest you get one or it won't hold your necklaces and/or bracelets.

I cut my fabric a little generously so I would have plenty to work with (so maybe an inch, inch and a half beyond the edges of my back and foam pad).

Warm up your glue gun and you'll attach the fabric to the foam, and then glue it to your backing.

My pad was glued to the back, and then there were screws through the backing and foam to the frame. When I glued my fabric down, and then glued the foam onto the backing, I tried not to put glue over where the screws needed to go.

Now you'll cut your screen just a bit bigger than the front of the frame and you'll staple it or glue it in place, basically replacing the glass or plastic with the screen.

Now, it was a little funky doing this part because these hinges didn't allow the frame to lay flat open. I just propped the back up so the front part could lay flat while I stapled it in place. I started with one side, got it stapled down, the really stretched the screen as I stapled the opposite side, then continued to pull as I did the two short sides. I didn't get it to lay perfectly flat and taut, but that's ok. It will still look great if you can't get it as tight as you want.

Finally, trim the excess screen and put your back piece back into its place. Then put some pushpins where you want in the fabric-covered foam and hang your necklaces or bracelets on them. Close the front and put your earrings through the screen holes and enjoy!