Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Traincase to Vanity

I used to long for an awesome traincase, and then I got one.  As much as I loved the way it organized and looked, it just wasn't easy to open up since it needed a lot of room.  My bathroom was not an ideal spot for it, my bathroom is small and it just was not working out.  Then I had a new dream: a beautiful and functional vanity.  I figured I would never be able to fit one in my room, and my dream remained just that.  Then, I went crazy and got rid of lots of stuff and re-organized, and suddenly I had plenty of room.  Then, I couldn't find a suitable vanity.  It had to fit in my space, about 40-43 inches, and have lots of drawers and organizing space.  Most pieces of furniture advertised as "vanities" were WAY too tiny, having only one small drawer and minimal top space.  Then, my Craigslist search ended when I came upon a little white desk that made my heart flutter. <3

Priced at $125, it was the perfect size and had tons of organizing room.  When I met the sellers, my dad and I were able to bargain them down to $100, and really I needed the extra funds to repaint it.  It's a gorgeous solid wood desk, but the paint job was questionable.  It looked as though the previous owners decided they should paint it with a paint roller and thus there was some weird texture going on.  It was also pretty dirty.  So, operation vanity included a definite re-paint.

Sasha's inspecting my work ;)


Here's the silly knobs from before, they were just not to my taste at all!

So these pictures were after some sanding of rough spots where the previous owners had left some paint globs, and also after giving it a thorough cleaning.

So, let's look at my traincase and what it looked like before.  I loved it so much, but as I said, it just wasn't practical.  I ended up usually just using the things on the top layer of it, because it was a pain opening it up because I had to transfer it to a different space and it was pretty heavy!  I was also constantly worrying about it toppling over.

So, here's my stash of makeup products all organized before.

I ended up adding this basket with a box inside recently, to increase the amounts of things that were easy to get to.

The top layer aka the layer of products that I use the most

top layer close-up

And here, you can see some of the pretty things I was missing out on using because they were on lower levels


more stuff I avoided using because I didn't want to open up the whole traincase

This thing is huge and took up a ton of space all opened up 
So, let's take a look at the finished vanity now!  I am so darn happy with it, although I'm still on the look-out for some more drawer organizers, so things don't slide around every time I open and close the drawers.
Here it is all it's glory!  It was painted with Krylon spray paint in "A Bright Idea" and I think it looks pretty awesome with my lime green walls. :)
The adorable drawer pulls that I got, they were less than $3 a piece from Home Depot.  I love that they have the yellow of the vanity and the green of my walls on them.  Plus, they add a really cute retro flair.



For now, I basically used what I already had, except for the green mirror which was a cheap $5 from Target.  It will soon be replaced with a mirror on a stand, but it's perfect for right now!



So this is my little organized section on top: My Tokidoki hand mirror, a metal bird cage that holds a lot of my essentials, and some boxes.  The little striped box holds my MAC lipsticks and the bottom one is filled with random vintage costume jewelry.


So here's my most used makeup brushes.  They're in a glass vase with black river rocks in the bottom.

And the Hello Kitty ceramic jar opens up and it has cotton pads inside!

 And here's how the drawers are organized for now:
The top drawer, over top of where the chair slides in, has some of my most used stuff:  MAC shadows, random lipsticks, a few random palettes, eyeliners, foundation, etc.


and here's the small top drawer located on the right, it has my mineral stuff inside, which is mostly all from Aromaleigh.  So sad, they went out of business :(  Also, has four of the super old Maybelline roller eyeshadows in there, they are still good as new and the colors are really quite lovely!

Cute little $0.50 bins from Target: the top one is random drugstore eyeshadow palettes, the bottom one is all of my pressed blushes, and a small bin of random glosses on the side and a cup with my eye make-up remover and a bag of double-sided q-tips I use a ton to clean up my eye make-up

Third drawer with more $0.50 Target bins with some more random high end and drugstore eyeshadows.  The high end ones are all either gwp's or marked down ones from TJ Maxx.  And off to the side is a small portion of my nail polish collection, which are some of my current favorites.

Bottom Drawer that has random glosses I don't use much, a bin of samples, false eyelashes, sample containers, and other random face stuff and make-up remover.

And here's one of my favorite boxes...


My MAC lipsticks and glosses as well as some of my favorite drugstore glosses!
And here's the glosses on the side: NYX megashine lipgloss in Sugar Pie and three Revlon super lustrous lipglosses in Coral Reef, Pink Pop, and Lilac Pastelle.
 I hope you enjoyed my picture-filled journey from traincase to vanity!  It was so much fun deciding on how to re-do the vanity, as well as re-organizing everything.  It's even more fun to do my make-up now because I get to use whatever I want with no hassle.  It's all at my fingertips, and I just love it so much! 


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