I love thrift store shopping! It’s especially fun when I can turn my finds into a project. This project was inspired by my niece, Olivia. During one of her visits, we did some thrift store shopping. She surprised me by making me a DIY jewelry box. I loved it so much, we just made one for Melia (4).

I bought some old tea cups and plates from a local thrift store. I spent less than $3 total. It was just random, mismatched stuff. So often things in this section are marked down because these items don’t always move. There wasn’t anything really unusual so we went with standard stuff. My recommendation is to play with things and stack them together in the store to see what fits together best or what looks cute.

Using some gorilla glue, I glued the dishes together and stacked them in place. They sat over night with books on top to weight them down (per gorilla glue instructions). The photo is not great, but you can see the different styles/patterns.

I used ivory spray paint. Mostly because I had some already on hand. If you prefer different colors for different levels, you can paint first and glue second. We went basic for Melia’s. I wanted to see how she did with it. Hoping it doesn’t get broken right away.

The painting was done outside. When painting glass, you have to go with really light layers! If there is too much, the paint will easily run and you will see the drips. In between each layer I waited an hour to dry. In total, I had 3 layers to get the coverage I wanted.

The only other thing we did was dress it up with some beads Melia picked out. We bought these at Walmart for $2.88. There are some left over for her to play with and create her own necklace. In total I had about $5 into the project.

She now has one place she can keep all of the jewelry she has started to accumulate. She loves it because she feels like a big girl. Below is a photo of the one Olivia gave me. She used a votive for the top