Jewelry Box :Letters to Juliet.

Hello Blog world. 

If liked my Facebook page...and I know all of you have ;) I was teasing you with a little bit of information that I was baking paper. Did any one have any good guesses? If so I would like to hear about them. 

Before I reveal the project (This is what happens when Casey gets power muhaha) I wanted to tell you the back story. 

We went to the I-75 flea market in Ocala Florida. This was the first time my boyfriend and I have been there. It was ok. But the dealers have overtaken the flea. Too many tables per one person and couldn't find the one person who was in charge. So that might have been a good thing for me on spending.

On one of the few tables I found a wine crate. I don't know why it caught my eye but it did. It was one of the few tables where the owner was present. The front had Mirassou which I assumed was french. Which doesn't really fit my "Italian" themed room. So that bothered me. I knew it was going to be slightly fixed but I still needed to know where it originated. Here's your history lesson. Pierre and Henrietta Mirassou came from France in 1854 and moved to California. They started a wine company making their wine the old french way. The company has been in the Mirassou family since then. They even survived during the prohibition era. Now being on their fifth generation.  

Point of history lesson: Even though its a french wine, the wine has been made in California since 1854...In my opinon the fact that I turned it into an Italian Jewelry box isn't offensive. Its cultural diffusion. (Hey Cobleskillians remember that word!) 

Now that I have bored you to tears.... Let me just get on with it and show you my project. 

But first let me explain the title.... Ahaha you still have to wait!

Did any one see the movie Letters to Juliet? Good movie for those who haven't seen it. Its about a place in Verona courtyard where they have sort of a tribute to Juliet (yes Romeo and Juliet) Where people leave letters to Juliet asking her about love. Although my opinion she isn't the person I would ask since...she well is dead because of her "love". But I am also a hopeless romantic and I think I like the concept of people writing to a fictional character.  

Back on track I loved the concept of using actual letters in my project but since I had none I settled for postcard scrapbook paper. So that's where you get the Letters to Juliet reference.

Now that I exhausted both of my references and knowledge I suppose I will show you my project now.  

What is it? Well its a wine crate transformed into a Jewelry box. Still confused? 

Yea... I get that a lot. 

If you go back to my first blog post you will see that I already made my own Jewelry box. This idea was to good to pass up and I needed to redo it anyways. 

And I am sure you are asking why don't I just buy one. 

Silly mortals don't you know? That would be too easy!

Besides....They don't make them right. I hate having a tangled mess of necklaces. This makes it no tangles. 

See? Nice and neat. 

Ok so here is the step by step of how I transformed

This:

Into:

This:

I know I know you are all so curious as to why I baked paper.

Because This...Didn't look old enough

So I aged it. 

I cut out the little post cards to un-collage them.

I crumbled them up to give them a more wrinkle look to them. To give them a stained look I "dyed" them with tea. All I did was take the tea bag and rub it on the pages...This caused it to loose its wrinkle effect so I had to crumble them again. I also added a dash of cinnamon to give it age spots. I know I know when I get older I am going to want to avoid age spots but for now I put them on paper.

I am glad I found a use for my oven by the way. 

Set your oven to the lowest setting possible. I only left mine in for about five minutes at first but that didn't seem like enough time so I put them in longer. But keep an eye on them...I will not be responsible for you burning your house down trying to age paper. 

Basically you want to wait until the paper is dry. It will start to curl up once its dried. 

I don't know if the aluminum foil was necessary, But I didn't want the paper to stick to my cookie sheet. Which was a good idea because they did stick a little bit... Maybe I should have used pam cooking spray? Do they make one for paper (That is a joke people...Don't use pam)

Once they came out they looked like this:

Nice and old looking. I also feel like doing this made them look less scrapbook-ey. 

Now wait for them to cool...Just kidding. 

But seriously I don't bake this is the only time I get to use my baking phrases. 

Now I needed to make the wine crate look less new and more old. So my mom told me to just get golden oak stain. Which I found with no problems. But I started comparing the colors....When some lady very rudely starting getting in my personal bubble. I ended up buying a completely different color. Thankfully it worked out well. I wanted a darker color anyways. 

 I realize now that I didn't take any pictures of staining the crate. I am telling you once I get going I either get covered in glue, paint or paper that I forget to take pictures.(Mike keeps telling me to do a video...that would be a mess) But here is the side hopefully you can sort of tell that I changed the color from yucky modern crate tan to a pretty wood finish cherry 235. (Why is the number there?)

Staining was actually pretty easy to do. Its just like paint only easier to work with. I was even a smart little crafter and wore gloves...I should do that more often but If I am too excited to take pictures you should know that I am to excited for gloves. 

I stained front as well just in-case my paper didn't cover it all the way I had a matching door. 

Once the stain was dry I Mod Podged my paper to what is now the door of my jewelry box. 

I remembered to take this picture during because I wanted to show you what this stuff looks like before its dried. This freaked me out the first time I used Mod Podge. But as you can tell in the picture above it dries pretty well. 

This is a close up of it dried. You can sort of notice on the bottom where I had the cinnamon. 

Now to make it a jewlery box and not just a wine crate with letters on it I added cup hooks. 

This is a better picture of the stain work as well. 

Now I only added 8 of them because...That was the cheaper box. If you need more get more they have lots of choices. 

Also when installing these its easier if you tap them in a little with a hammer...Don't be stubborn like me and wait until the last few to try that. 

The rope thing was also driving me crazy it kept slipping down interfering with the hooks. I just took some hot glue and glued them to the box. 

While I had the glue out.. I decided to give my door a door knob. 

I am sure that this door knob will fall off but luckily its not really required. 

I glued a bead to the door and glued a little decorative brad in side the bead. That little rose thing was just a college keeper. Whatever that is. It was cute. I had it. I used it. 

Also while at Michaels I bought a Jewelry stand to put inside the box to give it more hanging options than just the hooks. 

There you have it. 

My new Jewelry box.

 Total cost:

Box: $2.00

Paper: 10.00 (For a whole book)

Stand: 7.00 (I had a gift card muhaha)

Hooks: .97

Stain: 5.00 8oz

My total cost: 7.97

Gift cards are awesome (Thank's Wendy!)

This project was of course:

I hope you enjoyed this project even though I teased you with details and tortured you with history. I just wanted you to know that I actually put thought in this and it wasn't just a pinterest find. 

See you next time

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