Dorm Room Crafts! (Part 3)

I consider this piece to have been the real challenge in the set of three that I've done so far, but it's also the one I'm most proud of!

And the other side?

Project 3: Jewelry Shadow Box (SECRET Shadow Box!)

My Pin-spiration? (the pin leads here for reasons I don't know)

I deemed it necessary to have a cool, easy way to display and store my jewelry, and this seemed perfect. I didn't have a box, so I went a different route: I bought a deep 10 x 14 canvas at Binders, which happened to be having a sale on canvases! 

Using my trusty Martha Stewart acrylic paint referenced in the first post, I painted the outside of the frame, and I painted the canvas (really the back side of the canvas since I was working on the back side of the entire thing) white. I had gotten a tube of acrylic paint in Zinc White from Binders as well for about $4.50.

I then spent a long time trying to carefully plan the chevron pattern that I was attempting to do in tape so I could paint over the white with blue, but finally threw my hands up in the air and put down tape approximately where it looked right. What's crafting without a little risk?  ;)

So I put down masking tape where I wanted my white chevron to be, and then painted over the canvas in my blue paint. When I lifted the tape off after two or three layers of blue paint, it left the white showing through. From various pencil marks and fingerprints, the white part wasn't quite right, so I added a couple more layers of white paint to the chevron.

Then I let it dry overnight! 

Now to actually turn it into a storage unit. I got twelve brass cup hooks at Ace Hardware (two packs of six at $2 a pack). They look like this and are about 3/4 in. long:

The next part was fun. I dented a small hole where I wanted each hook and then screwed them in. I put them in on the underside of the frame that holds the canvas, as well as on the sides. I did six on top, and then three on one side (for rings) and two on the other (for bracelets). 

I was going to add little boxes on the bottom like the pinterest one had done, but I decided to let the frame be able to sit flat against the wall even if the other side were turned around. So I made a SECRET jewelry shadow box to hide my jewelry from the dorm hall kleptomaniac!

Since I did, after all, have a nice clean canvas on the other side, I went ahead and painted it so that I could turn my jewelry holder around and have a nice (deceiving!) piece of art. It came out like this:

If only I could draw a stag freehand. Good thing there's pinterest! I saved this image from pinterest (originally found here):

I copied it into a Word document and sized it to be a little less than a page tall, then printed it. Then came several minutes of very concentrated cutting!

I made little masking tape rings (to be like double-sided tape) to tape down as much of my stag stencil as I could to the front of my canvas. Pressing the edges down as I went, I painted with the same blue paint over my stencil with a couple coats. Then came the going back in and painting white paint carefully into the body (the antlers proved challenging!). 

After the stag was dry, I painted over it with a light coat of glue and added a very light coat of white glitter (I can't really tell if you can see it in the picture). It's subtle but adds nice dimension.

I haven't added hardware to actually hang up my secret jewelry holder/painting yet, but I'll need to put the picture wire at the top (as opposed to on the back or front) so I can seamlessly turn my canvas around as I wish.

Ta-da!