The Icing on My Kismet Cake

I posted pictures on Facebook of this pitiful little wine rack that I bought at The Guild Shop earlier this week. I plan to use it to store craft supplies but I didn't tell anyone which supplies those would be. As a hint, I put some empty water bottles in the rack.

I can't show you the finished product yet since the rack is in Houston and my supplies are still here in Lafayette, plus that poor rack needs some work. But here are the mysterious supplies that I intend to put in it.











I cut the tops off empty water bottles and shoved a skein of yarn inside. It works perfectly to keep the skein all neat and still lets me see the pretty fibers. How cute is that thing gonna be when I paint it white and put colorful fibers in each slot? I can't wait to get it finished!

In case you're wondering how the mind of a creative genius works, I have no idea. But here's a sneak peek at how mine works. I often get asked how I come up with some of my creative ideas and the truth is that I don't. I take bits and pieces of what I've seen others do and rearrange them into something similar but different. Most of the time someone else has already thought of the idea which I really sort of like. Serendipity is fascinating to me. Here's how this idea, or my version of it, was born.

I've been drinking a lot of water while cleaning out the house to get ready to move and I started saving my empty water bottles, hoping I could think of something to do with them besides create more trash. Right now I have 2 big plastic bags in my art room: one for trash and one for recycling. A couple of weeks ago I had just polished off the last drop of water in my bottle then reached down to open one of the plastic bags, thinking it was the recycling bag. It wasn't. It wasn't the trash bag either. It was my bag of yarn and fibers that were sitting there waiting for me to decide what to do with them. Bottle in one hand + yarn in the other = the birth of an idea.

I cut off the top of the bottle with a utility knife and the skein of yarn fit perfectly inside. Ever since then I've been putting yarn in empty water bottles then throwing them back inside the big plastic bag because that didn't exactly solve my storage problem, but it was a start.

Then a few days ago I spotted Mr. Pitiful Wine Rack at the thrift store and the first thing I thought of was my fiber bottles. As usual, I had no idea if it would even work but it looked great in my head. Jayson and I both thought the slots looked a little too big for a water bottle but I knew I could rig something if that ended up being the case. The rack is solid wood, except for the particle board thing on the back, so it's sturdy and it was cheap.

As soon as we got it back to the house, I quickly ran inside to grab a water bottle and sure enough it fit. I love it when that happens.

That's my idea but here's where it originally came from. Several years ago I saw this project in my favorite magazine, Readymade. They used Pringles cans covered in contact paper to store art supplies. I don't eat Pringles and really didn't have anywhere to put something like this but I liked it so I just logged it away in the archives of my brain.


Then within the last couple of months  I ran across this little gem on a blog called Leethal. The author was also inspired by the Readymade Pringles cans but she used her Trader Joe's coffee cans to store her yarns and fibers. I really love that idea but her tutorial looked like a whole lot of trouble and I don't have a source for coffee cans so I archived that idea too.

Recently this picture of a mason jar storage idea has been circulating on Pinterest. It's just a little slice of fabulous and I thought I might try to figure out some way to use it in the new house cuz it's just too fun not to. I like that it's functional but also pretty. Into the brain archives that one went as well. Now do you see why I have trouble remembering stuff? My hard drive is full so it has no choice but to overwrite.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago as I was standing in my disaster of an art room holding an empty water bottle in one hand and a skein of yarn in the other. All 3 of these pictures crawled out of the back of my brain and combined themselves. I knew the empty water bottles would give me the look of tubular storage that I fell in love with at Readymade. I knew they would hold at least most of the skeins of yarn and fibers in my collection like the idea from Leethal. And I would be able to see the fibers so the end result would be decorative a well as functional, like the jars from Pinterest.

The thrift store wine rack was just the icing on my kismet cake. I will definitely be posting pictures of the finished product after we move and I get it all put together.