- Emily Ellet
Pinterest Challenge – Use What You’ve Got: Jewelry Board

It started during my days at a desk job, when I’d get SUPER bored and have nothing to do and read endless articles and blogs on the Internet. Eventually, one of the bloggers I was reading linked to Pinterest, and the scrapbooker in me freaked the heck out. I could pin endless images? I could organize them in as many categories as I wanted? I could scroll through them for eternity?
I know, most of you probably don’t need a rundown of why Pinterest was so phenomenal to me. Consequently, you’ve probably all experienced some degree of addiction, as well. Well, it took me several months of Pinterest addiction before I realized that I was pinning, rather than doing – and I wasn’t happy about it.
So began a new attitude towards creativity. I pushed myself to try more sewing, cooking, and couponing (although the latter was NOT courtesy of Pinterest). One project in particular caught my eye: a cute hardware board for storing your earrings. I’ve never had the perfect earring storage; previous solutions have included a fishing tackle box and just stuffing them inside a large necklace gift box for a while. Neither enabled me to look at everything at once, and nothing was particularly attractive.

But when I got home with my hardware, months passed. How did I want to install them? I wasn’t really sure what would be strong enough other than plywood, but I was hesitant to buy a piece, especially once I realized that it would probably be too thick for the demo screws that came with each piece of hardware. I didn’t want to spend much money on this project, particularly not on a bunch of screws, and it was starting to be too much work in general – when suddenly, I had a realization.
Several months previously, I’d gotten sick of our disorganized tool box shelf in the front closet and had created a very DIY pegboard out of finishing nails and a piece of particle board I’d yanked off a trashed furniture piece on our curb. But I had half of that particle board left – would it be strong enough for my fancy, heavy hardware?

So I sat down with a Sharpie, my particle board, and my hardware, laying out a design that I thought would be attractive yet functional. Then I spent several hours over a couple days drilling my holes. Unfortunately, blogging was not on my radar at the time, so I have no photos of this process! But eventually, mercifully (it was surprisingly tedious work), I installed my hardware. I’d finally done a real Pinterest Challenge!

Of course, most of my earrings are posts, since I can’t wear heavy earrings or most fishhooks. So my board was sadly naked for quite some time. Then my sister’s mother-in-law sweetly offered me a whole box of lovely clip-on jewelry from her grandmother. Presto-changeo! Overnight, my board went from drab to spectacular.

So finally, I have my earring solution – an attractive, completely visible, portable board featuring every earring in easy reach. And I tackled one of my Pinterest dream projects. Success all around!
(Is it just me, or did this post feel like a commercial? It’s not! I just love Pinterest.)
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