A place for all the pretty things!

I've had this typeset tray for years upon years.  My Aunt bought it for me from an antique shop in upstate New York during a family vacation long ago.  I've always thought it was lovely and wanted to do something with it.  There are lots of inspiring projects on Pinterest for typeset trays so I decided to give it a try with mine.  I saw some trays turned into tables with glass over the top to display small collections.  I also saw wine corks glued inside of the tiny cubbies so the board could be used to hang notes with stick pins.  The use I liked the most was as a jewelry display.

So I dusted my tray off and bought some eyelet screws and went to work.  I recently bought a Black & Decker drill (so I wouldn't have to borrow my Dad's so much!) and also a set of drill bits.  The drill makes it really easy to make the right size holes, but since you can't use a screwdriver for eyelet screws the rest had to be done by hand.  My hands are very sore at the moment so I've only added enough screws to hang 20 or so pieces so far.  Some of the trays that I saw on pintereset were painted bright colors and others were made to look kind of worn or shabby chic, but I really like the natural color of the wood so I decided to leave it as is.

Below are a few pics of some of the earrings that I've hung so far.  I really don't have a whole lot of jewelry to start with, but now I guess I'll have plenty of room to add more in the future.  I haven't figured out yet how to hang all of my stud earrings or all of the hoops that I have that won't fit in an eyelet screw.  I'm thinking maybe ribbon would work for the studs, but I haven't tried that yet.  I don't have any "real" jewelry, it's all just pieces that I thought were pretty and have bought from department stores, online, or ones that I received as gifts - nothing fancy, but I think they look so pretty displayed!

I used large screw eyes (I think that is what they are called?) along the bottom to hang necklaces.  I only put one every other space so more could be added later - plus more than one necklace could be hung per hook.

Bracelets were another thing that I wasn't sure how to hang.  I found lots of pins for jewelry displays on pinterest and this was another idea that kept showing up.  Lots of people have used pretty bottles and just draped their bracelets over the neck of the bottle.  I didn't have any pretty bottles, but I do love the strap locks that are on these Grolsch beer bottles and I wasn't using them for anything else so I decided they might look nice sitting in front of the typeset tray :)

So anyway, there's my new jewelry display!  I think I really it so far.  And maybe I'll remember to wear my jewelry on occasion now that its all out where I can see it!