DIY jewelry organizer

After seeing this cool idea for a jewelry organizer on etsy.com





I decided instead of shelling out the cash, I would do it myself
because I would have more fun and it would be inexpensive. First, I
did my research: web searches with keywords like necklace, jewelry,
organizer. Came across a little bit country at aidenloveszoe.com




and a wiki-how to. While finding sites like, www.craftzine.com and www.craftbits.com to be inspiring, I had little luck for more visuals or instructions.

In my process of research, I also consulted artistic friends for ideas. My supremely talented artist friend, Lindsay told me she had made something like this before and used embroidery floss instead of wire. After seeing the "country" frame, I was hesitant.

After I accidentally broke the glass on a frame I was using for photos, I had the perfect frame. It’s gold, long, slender and fits perfectly between my sink and mirrored medicine cabinet.

With the gold frame, I decided the wire would be too much, so I decided on
Lindsay’s idea of embroidery floss. At less than a dollar each,
embroidery floss is inexpensive and colorful. Then I bought an
inexpensive staple gun and staples at McGuckin Hardware, the best hardware store in the U.S.!

After I had gathered all my supplies, I chose one floss color and started
stapling the floss to the back of the frame. I went randomly from one
side of the frame to another side. Filling in space where I could,
then looping the floss around other pieces of floss to provide more
surface area for the jewelry.






I used the entire skein of blue floss, moved on to using the entire
skein of green, then finally I used most of the skein of brown floss.



Overall I am very happy with the way this project turned out and it
cost me less than $30! Since I am using the jewelry organizer mostly
for necklaces, it is a little difficult to take them on and off by
unclasping them, so I may add some buttons to hang them on to make
taking them on and off easier.

music for art's sake

Music has always fueled me to create. In the past it has always been a muse of poetry. More recently, as I listen to certain songs images appear in my head and I want to create a painting or collage of my muse. Here is a digital collage inspired by the song "My body is a cage" by the Arcade Fire. My goal is to someday use materials to digitize it. The song is below the image for listening.

my birds

I've been volunteering my time on Saturday mornings working with children creating art. Being around creativity has always been infective, but there is something about a child discovering their artistic abilities. It makes my heart happy to see the pride that comes over their faces as they present their finished project to their parent or friend. It's magical.

These birds I created are inspired by them. Also they are inspired by the muse I have found once again but this time it takes the form from a positive force coming from within.

clutter pains, the glimmer of hope that is DIY and my savior, Peter Walsh

The days are slow at work and I've been turning my creative wheels by crusin' the www in search of anything and everything to make my new apartment feel like an uncramped savvy home. After 6 years of living in various places that were at least double the size of my current space, I've found I have a lot of stuff that I've been storing away and not dealing with. I won't stop my search until I've found DIY ideas and advice on how to organize, snaze and declutter my new apartment space. With a limited budget and space plus a mountain of possible supplies already residing in-home, I'm gathering every resource possible to ease my anxiety and make my living a little more DIY my style.

My coach and spiritual supporter:Peter Walsh
Walsh encourages me to purge purge purge! Don't keep those 10 balls of yarn that have been sitting in my storage bin for the past 3 years that "someday" I will knit something out of. How many boring photos of your family vacation from when you were 5 do you really need?



I've been wanting to live a simpler and less full of stuff life. Walsh has really been an encouraging voice in this process. He makes sense. I want to know why I'm attached to my stuff and what I should get rid of. Walsh has the answers.

My do-anything-with-everything creative inspirer:Ready Made magazine
As if scrambling to keep the stuff, Peter tells me I should be purging, I'm scouring the pages of Ready Made to find creative ways to make those old photos into useful decor. Maybe I can make a much needed plant hanger quickly out of that yarn?



The reason I love this magazine is because it has clever ideas on how to make the coolest things out of stuff you would never think of. My one gripe is that often instead of telling you to salvage or going out to your local reusable home building materials company, they encourage you to go out and buy new wood and supplies at your local hardware store. Ready Made is inspiring. They always have at least one project that I would definitely make (using flat tennis balls for a herb potter) and tons of really great home tips (ie: using crushed aspirin to get out under arm sweat stains).

Being so inspired, I've already used old books, magazines and record covers to make decoupaged bird silhouettes (photos coming soon) to hang above my bed.



Tonight I'm going salvaging for old drawers to make really snazzy bookshelves.



Then instead of wearing that flair of band buttons to clutter up my hoodie, I'm going to use them to make a much needed place to hang my necklaces while decoring up the bathroom.

Inspired by the Salvage Sisters, I'm now on a mission to make my bleak room fixture into something cute and colorful. Plus I want to find a full length mirror which I can decoupage the frame and hook over the back of my door. Figure out how to make my own night light or make a cheap one more my style. Meanwhile, not purchasing more clutter that will sit for years in space that doesn't exist and organize the existing stuff to be functional or stored cleverly.

I'm on DIY overload and the creative juices are flowing. I hope to inspire you to declutter and create your own clever home decor.

Other note worthy www's to cruise:
Apartment Therapy
Instructables
DIY Network

Seahorse

"Seahorse" is a song by Devendra Banhart.

(staring thirty in the face)

It wasn't suppose to be
like this
I was not suppose to be
staring thirty in the face
and single

what went wrong?

there is no husband
only my overly fluffy blanket
to warm me
to comfort me

there are no children
only my cuddly kitty
to love me unconditionally

there is no career
only my job
to have the freedom
to do what I please

what went right.

there are friends
who lift me up
when the sea
threatens to drown me

there is freedom
to make new dreams
new plans
to not have my life
revolve around anyone
other than me

it wasn't suppose to be
like this
I was not suppose to be
staring thirty in the face
and thinking
my life has only
just begun

(a time all my own)

A copy of Persuasion
some mellow non-distracting tunes
a fear of sneaky spiders
boxes unpacked
fuzzy furry boots
Nebraksa red men's sweat pants
matched with a pink hooded Jem sweatshirt
Poems to be read
Poems to be written
songs to be played
a song is playing
a half eaten bag of chips
the sun and the moon
a soft couch that supports my back
Legs curled up to make a desk
rolls of wrapping paper
mostly drunk bottles of liquor
the clink of kitty's collar on her bowl
Alice in Kitchenland
the flopped over aloe
urges to draw
fears to follow through
red man stuck with knives
couches from the 70s
pink from the tweens
easy to talk to some
harder to speak to others
days & nights
ocean waves & tides
unnecessary calls
skip a beat
rhetorical listening print
a single lonely paperclip

(the crazed mixed up girl)

sitting in the back of the bus
deep in thought
fervently writing
and reading poetry
in her own world
processing through
with her blue headphones
and patterned tote bag

(the dreams I have weaved)

the dreams I weaved as a child
have come unraveled
ravaged by lost souls
with misconceptions about love
after the massacre,
I take the time
to re-weave what has been shredded
composing a new weave
with a similar pattern
the colors fade with time
but the pattern is coaxed to
new creativity and the ability
to move with its surrounds
becoming stronger and more confident
in this newly weaved pattern

lull

the time has almost come, for some more writing to share....

drama preference

i prefer my drama in fiction
as words published on a page
approved by publishing houses
fictionalized by a well known author
right there in black and white
invited into my life
causing no inconvenience
not invading nor intruding
or disrupting
fiction does not reek of bad habits
it does not perform out of guilt
if i feel threatened or angry
i can turn the page
i can put the book down
if the dialogue is repetitive or uninteresting
i can skip a paragraph or a chapter
i can do away with it all together
its simply a matter of drama preference

simply unsettled

a fleeting moment
my stomach drops
instincts flash red
on edge
fears unconfirmed
old habits play tricks
manipulating my paranoia
simple insecurities be falsified
walking away from my past
but haunts my present
nagging at my future
something ominous
dreams of years pale
do closing hours near?
disprove my agitation
abate the slow faint sadness forming in my heart
speak your concern or insecurity
speak it now
or simply settle my psychotic paranoia

I almost peed myself

It's time for some campaignin...

some reason it won't embed :( go to this link:

Jib Jab - Time for Campaignin

poems from Moab

desert schizophrenia (Rough -with various revisions)
home again
soul ache to roll in the red desert sand
miles away drive through canyons
gazing from below looking to above
your being feels miniscule but your heart soars
transcendent rock formations that desire to be chalked

my head is not where it should be
it is full of fantasies
my wallet empty
except for
expiring plastic

to roll in the desert sand
feel its magic cover your body
as a coat of armor
then return
to the default world

my head is not where it should be
concern of falling and judgement
of failure in dissapointing myself
to get out of my failed head
and enjoy the moment
the opportunity



untitled (rough)
red desert magic-wonder
brings me closer to who i am
my center
something you never allowed me to learn
you never trusted me to live
selfishly
keeping the magic to yourself


silly pink flowers....and head bands (rough w/ revisions)
accessorize your child
accessorize your life
consume consume
i want it in pink
blue
and aqua marine
longing to minimize
longing to not have
the attraction to more things
unnecessary multiple things
no distraction
what statement are you making?
what society are you conforming?
stay away vagrants, lost children and misbehaviors


must leave(rough w/ revision)
i am screaming on the inside to be here where red desert star dust and breathtaking awe inspiring rock formations are within grasp -stuck stuck- or adventure which is drawing my soul away from man made cement and plastic -to be organic natural & free, tied to sage and desert sand -must leave

Powell speaks intellect

Who will be the one to speak intelligently and eloquently about the disillusionment of the Republican Party's platform? To speak of its injustices and its mission to divide the American people by promoting hate and fear of those who do not conform to their small self created boxes? To stop pointing fingers and just state "This is what is wrong..." Who will speak out? Who?

another in inspirational boredom

slippery ink pen (edited raw draft)

there is nothing like a slippery ink pen
that flows free from the tip
letting your words liberate themselves from their cage of conformity
the black so blatant on the white
bleeds itself unto its paper
hungry for substance

a poem by Diane DiPrima

so interesting how this was written in 1998 but is still prevalent today

Rant, from a Cool Place by Diane DiPrima "I see no end of it, but the turning upside down of the entire world" --------------------------------- Erasmus We are in the middle of a bloody, heartrending revolution Called America, called the Protestant reformation, called Western man, Called individual consciousness, meaning I need a refrigerator and a car And milk and meat for the kids so, I can discover that I don't need a car Or a refrigerator, or meat, or even milk, just rice and a place with -------------no wind to sleep next to someone Two someones keeping warm in the winter learning to weave To pot and to putter, learning to steal honey from bees, ------------wearing the bedclothes by day, sleeping under (or in) them at night; hording bits of glass, colored stones, and ------------stringing beads How long before we come to that blessed definable state Known as buddhahood, primitive man, people in a landscape together like trees, the second childhood of man

I don't know if I will make it somehow nearer by saying all this out loud, for christs sake, that Stevenson was killed, that Shastri ------------was killed both having dined with Marietta Tree the wife of a higher-up in the CIA both out of their own countries mysteriously dead, as how many others as Marilyn Monroe, wept over in so many tabloids done in for sleeping with Jack Kennedy - this isn't a poem - full of ------------cold prosaic fact thirteen done in the Oswald plot: Jack Ruby's cancer that disappeared ------------in autopsy the last of a long line - and they're waiting to get Tim Leary Bob Dylan Allen Ginsberg LeRoi Jones - as, who killed Malcolm X? They give themselves away with TV programs on the Third Reich, and I wonder if I'll live to sit in ------------Peking or Hanoi see TV programs on LBJ's Reich: our great SS analysed, our money exposed, ------------the plot to keep Africa genocide in Southeast Asia now in progress Laos Vietnam Thailand Cambodia ------------O soft-spoken Sukamo O great stone Buddhas with sad negroid lips torn down by us by the red ------------guard all one force one leveling mad mechanism, grinding it down to earth and swamp to sea ------------to powder

till Mozart is something a few men can whistle or play on a homemade flute and we bow to each other telling old tales half remembered gathering shells learning again "all beings are from the very beginning Buddhas" or glowing and dying radiation and plague we come to that final great ------------love illumination "FROM THE VERY FIRST NOTHING IS."

Posted 8/25/98
Rant, From a Cool Place. © Copyright
Found: http://www.evergreenreview.com/100/poetry/diprima.html

another for inspirational boredom

1:59:49PM (raw form)

my mind is motionless
my body fat with boredom
plastic plastic plastic plastic
plastic plants
plastic countertops
plastic keys
plastic to write
plastic to highlight
plastic to waste
and papers to fill
quotas to make
plastic to buy
more plastic to waste
inorganic
unnatural
understimulated
underachieve
lives to lead
lies to believe
substance abandoned
lethargy seeps in
economy grumbles
watching the seconds tick
watching the minutes slowly float by
2:04:07PM
progress checked
stalled
more to life
less plastic less waste

inspirational boredom

:untitled: (raw form)

Another day, another dollar, another hour wasting before my eyes
time spent filling emptiness into empty work
to fill my mind with words and taste red wine
take in another stone as i breathe while exhaling creativity
inactivity turns my blood cold and my body fast with lethargacism
to be any where away from plastic surfaces, highlighters and another wasted headline