{Tutorial} | Jewelry Shelf

I've been putting this project off for far too long. I've had all of the supplies for some time and I just haven't gotten around to doing it. In fact, my first Mindy Mae's purchase was the knobs that I will use in this project. When the girls over at Mindy's asked me to share a tutorial using their products, I knew this was the perfect one. Here's what I came up with:

Want to make your own? Here's what you'll need:
1. A piece of wood. Mine was 36" in length and 9" wide. Luckily, my dad does custom woodworking for a living. I have an unlimited supply of the stuff.
2. Candlesticks. I used one 6" candlestick from Mindy Mae's Market.
3. Knobs.
4. Craft paint.
5. Sandpaper.
6. Wood glue.
7. Drill, a few screws.
8. Hanging hardware.

Like I mentioned before, my dad owns a woodworking business. So I took my piece of wood that I found in the barn and went to his shop. Using a table saw, I cut the board into two 18 halves. I liked the 9" width for the top of my shelf and trimmed the other half to be about 4 1/2 inches in width. I now had two pieces one 18X9 and another 18X4.5. The dimensions are really up to you, though! The remainder was cut into small triangle pieces, which I'll talk about later.

Note: The triangle pieces are not attached yet, just sitting there. Sorry it looks a little confusing!

As you can see in this picture above, there's a lot more detail. My dad, the all-knowing perfectionist when it comes to woodworking came in to inform me that there's all sorts of things I could do to make sure this thing would never come apart. That's where the groove and the small triangle support braces came into the picture. I'm almost certain this is overkill, but I wasn't going to shoot him down while he was trying to help. The important triangles are the two that will brace the shelf against the wall, preventing your shelf from being too top heavy and falling forward.

Anyway, I secured the two pieces together and added the triangles for support using wood glue. If you do use the triangle support pieces, be sure you aren't placing them where your knobs need to come through. I spaced each of my knobs so that the two on the ends were 3" from the end and then put 4" between each knob.

Allow this to dry for a few hours. When everything is secured, you can drill your holes into the bottom piece. You could do this before, it doesn't really matter. Again, I spaced each of my knobs so that the two on the ends were 3" from the end and then put 4" between each knob.

Once the holes were drilled, I began painting the wood. I started with a coat of dark gray. Since it's just the base coat, it doesn't need to be perfect. I watered it down a little so that a little went a long way. Once this layer has dried, then you can apply your white (or whatever color you'd like) on top. Once this is dry, you can distress it using the sandpaper. I used this same technique on the candlesticks, only I used a blue color as my top coat.

Last, I attached the knobs. This is part of the reason I designed this the way I did. The knobs stick out in the back, making it difficult to hang flush against the wall. With the wood put together as I've done, you don't need to worry about this. Should you alter it a bit, you'd just need to cut off the excess part of the

 

Then, attach your hanging hardware and you're finished!

 

This project was featured over at Turning This Into That! You should go over and check out their blog full of tutorials! There's also another great jewelry hanger that's a lot simpler than this and looks amazing!

Two more things! 1)Don't forget to enter the craft competition! See here for details! 2)Curious about the cigar box on my shelf? Click here to find out what it is!