Month of Makeovers Day 6: Vera meets shady hardware

Last week I hit the mother lode of dead stock window treatments from the 1960s. The warehouse shelving at Jomar, a clearing house for the dregs of unwanted merchandise, was crammed with hundreds of groovy plastic window shades from JCPenny of the past. A pile of shades came home with me. Red! Pink! Orange! Lemon! Still in original wrappers and only one dollar each!

There were giant plastic bins filled with matching wooden shade pulls.

And to top it off, dozens of yellow plastic shade pulls were loose in the bottoms of the bins. I picked them out one by one. The whole bag full set me back an amazing fifty cents. Fifty cents! They were too fun to pass up.

I figured I’d come up with a way to use some of this cool stuff eventually. Little did I know that “eventually” would be NOW because Luray’s current makeover project isn’t quite ready to debut. I’ve seen a preview and can attest that it’s definitely worth the wait. Much better than my quickie job here…

Given one hour and only the stuff I have on hand, I decided to make a display hanger for my vintage acetate scarves. (Luray has the Vera scarf collection. Mine are poor imitations.) ManRay’s scrap wood box had a skinny board that would work. Usually he only has hulking chunks for wedging under window air conditioners. This is like hitting the lottery!

I plotted the spacing of the shade pulls, marked their placement, and then used a hammer and nail to make starter holes.

Next up was a coat of red paint. I would have loved to use bright red spray paint but it was getting dark outside and starting to sprinkle. All I can do is remember: do your best with what you’ve already got.

While I was waiting for the paint to dry I rummaged around in my fabric stash and came up with some jumbo yellow rickrack that I must have used for some previous project. It’s a bit stiff from glue, but that doesn’t matter because it’s getting glued again.

Each ring gets screwed into place when the paint is dry.

I used hot glue to trim the edges of the board with the miraculously matching rickrack.

A couple picture hangers on the back, a couple nails in the wall and TA DA! Vintage Vera-esque scarves meet groovy shade pulls. We’re good to go. I only wish the light were better for taking photos.

See the entire list of projects for our Month of Makeovers HERE.