Gotta Wear Shades

Realizing that the next project I thought I would be posting about is taking...a little longer than expected (yeah, a week!), I decided to post about another short project that I threw together a couple of nights ago.

Over the years, I've built up a bit of a collection of sunglasses. Nothing I would write home about, but enough that they have obviously now been mentioned in a blog (Which will probably be read by my home. Hi Mom!). For a while, these eye-savers have been sitting in a basket together on the kitchen counter. I wasn't a huge fan of this because they would scratch each others lenses and it was difficult to grab just one at a time. It was the monkeys in a barrel syndrome.

So I found a piece of wood in the garage that was about the right size and sanded it into oblivion. I also sanded the corners to round them slightly.

Then, I used a saw to cut a couple of close cuts on each side. The endgame here is to create a smooth notch.

This will leave you with some leftover little bits of wood. Use a hammer and a flat head screw driver and just chip those out.

I then took my Dremel tool and sanded the inside of the notch so that it was nice and smooth.

I once again whipped out the dark walnut stain and made gave it a good coat.

After giving it a day to dry, I was left with a very important decision: what type of ribbon should I use?

I ended up using the green one. Not the one you think...the other one. It was a good length and I already had it on hand. Then, I simply tied the ribbon to the board, being sure to align it with the notches that I had added to help keep in in place.

It's that easy! I personally decided to install it using flush mounts that I had found Lowes.

I then called in the husband to do the husband stuff, like putting it on the wall level. (To be honest, I can do this myself, but he's more meticulous about it).

It's so much nicer than just having them all thrown in a dark basket. I can actually pick out what glasses I want to wear rather than just grabbing whichever ones are on the top of the pile. I'm sure if you have a family of family sunglasses in your home, and entire rack can probably hold ALL of them, but once again, I'm a weirdo that owns way too many for one person.

The best part is that you can make it look fancier to fit your own style. There are a lot of possibilities with this project. You can change the shape, size, and color of your board as well as your ribbon. You can hang it with a hook, on a book, in a nook. I really like that the glasses are offset from the board because it adds visual interest to the space and acts as an art piece as well. Yay for usable sculpture! The whole thing kind of makes me feel like this.

Have you ever done any quick organizational projects that really paid off? Let us know in the comments!