Feeling Crafty

I'm not generally one to do craft projects, but I just had to create some way to display my vintage Valentines this year. I've always had my big house to show off my various collections in the past, but now that I'm living in a small apartment, there just isn't a place for display.  So I decided to build my own.

I'm not sure where I got the idea- if I saw it somewhere, or if I made it up. But I had a vision of a small rectangle of white lattice, where I would hang rows of twine to clip my miscellaneous paper collectibles: vintage Christmas cards, ephemera, postcards, and Valentines.

So, today I went to the source of all do-it-yourself projects: Home Depot, to find some lattice. I was sure I would find pieces large and small. I was a bit taken aback, when all of the wood latticework was about 8' x 6'. That seemed a little big to me! There were smaller pieces of plastic lattice, but I wasn't about to use plastic. So I asked if they could cut a piece for me, and it turns out, they sell half size pieces. Not 4' x 6', but 8' x 3'. Well, it was pretty tall, but for 7 bucks, who's going to complain? So I loaded it up in the SUV, then drove over to Office Depot, where I found the perfect clip to hang my Valentines: adorable small red binder clips. For $1 a pack! How cool was that? So I bought 2 packs, and came home to begin my project.



















I had already acquired a can of white spray paint, so I was ready to go! I lined the inside of my garage floor with white packing paper- we have a new neighbor, and the dumpster was surrounded by packing boxes filled with crumpled packing paper. The perfect thing! I sprayed several light coats on the lattice work, waiting about an hour between each coat. I didn't want the wood to look perfect and smooth, I wanted kind of a rough, whitewashed look.

When I brought the piece inside, I was surprised to see that it fit perfectly between the floor and ceiling! I didn't even have to drive a single nail into the wall, I just eased it in, and it force fit just right! My next step was to screw in some small brass eyelets into the edges, right where the wood overlapped. I put one on each side, creating 7 rows of eyelets. I then strung and knotted lengths of  brown twine between the eyelets.

Once all the rows were done, I simply attached my Valentines to the twine with the red binder clips! That wasn't hard at all! And it looks so cute!

All done! Doesn't it look adorable?