My new spice rack

hated my old Trudeau spice rack. It was so clunky and big. Yesterday my co-worker asked me if I would be interested in taking some Umbra products home. She had some left-over Umbra products that we weren't using for an upcoming shoot and Umbra let us keep the leftovers (how nice of them!). I immediately grabbed the spice rack. It's not the prettiest spice racks I've seen, but it was a whole lot better than what I had. I also saw an opportunity to do a little craft project with these. The box came with spice name stickers that you stick on top of the lid. They were just plain, black stickers with white type. Very boring and not so special. I decided to make my own stickers and personalize it a little more with colourful, patterned paper. And here is the result! I wish I had my SLR to take these photos, but unfortunately my camera is still at the shop. I don't know why it's taking so bloody long...

I used 2 different types of paper to create the sticker labels.

Here is the original spice rack box.

And these are the stickers that came with the box.

They are just plain stickers. I think mine is much better, don't you think?

I used scrap papers that I already had lying around.

I used a 1" circle cutter to cut the paper into round shapes, but you can use a punch as well.
I didn't have a 1" punch in my kit. I then used my Xyron sticker machine to create stickers out of
these circle punches. And that's about it! Oh, I used my software program, InDesign, to create
the template. The font I used was Monoline Script.

Shoe display project

y closet has been bothering me for some time now. I mean, I love the fact that I have a walk-in closet, but I hated how disorganized it was. I kept my shoes separate in my shoe closet downstairs, but I wanted to put it all in one space- my walk-in closet. I've been scouring different websites to get some cheap ideas and I was inspired by one blogger in particular- Closet Full of Nothing's Carolina's closet (see image below). I loved how she displayed all her shoes in a white shelving unit. Of course, I don't have nearly as many beautiful shoes that she has, but I still wanted to give my shoes the credit that it deserved. They were all currently in their respective shoe boxes downstairs.

So after much measuring and checking out different stores this weekend I settled on a small bookshelf unit from Ikea called the Billy bookcase. It was just the perfect size to fit in my closet without being overbearing and the depth was perfect to fit the length of all my shoes. I also liked the fact that it had adjustable shelves as I had planned on putting boots on the bottom shelf. Plus, it was a steal at $49! So if you look at the photo below you can see all the hard-work that went into putting this all together last night with my sister. It was actually quite fun because we were talking and drinking wine while we were putting it together.

This is how my closet looks when you first open the door. The shoe display is the focal point.

I put all my pretty girly things on the top on the bookshelf. I didn't have time to put a print in the photo frame (also picked up from Ikea!).

If you look to the left of the bookshelf I put a collapsable shoe storage hanger to fit the rest of my shoes. Unfortunately I still have more shoes downstairs, but it's much more organized this way...

Here's another view.

Do you like my new jewelry stand? I picked this up from Solutions. It's a jewelry stand from Umbra. It was only $24, which I think is a great deal. I can hang necklaces and bracelets on the branches and put rings and earrings on the tray at the bottom.

Now every time I go in my closet I feel so happy!

So to have more usable space in my closet I purchased a hanger bar kit that attaches to the main hanger bar up top and creates another bar at the bottom to give you more hanging space. Brilliant! That was also a steal at $7.99.

All in all I'm so happy with how it all turned out.