As promised, I decided to conquer something from my Pinterest boards since I had the time and on Saturday I headed to Ikea with Betsy to finally fix my makeup situation once and for all.
When we last left my makeup, I had it on the Ikea chalkboard.
It worked, but I found that I still didn’t trust the magnets to hold everything – those Color Tattoo cream eyeshadows are ridiculously heavy so they never held up. Nothing by bareminerals ever stuck because the lids are rounded (I could have done them backwards but I wanted to be able to see the color). Of course my palettes (the little mac ones aside) were too big to hang too. And the lighting in my bathroom is awful so I don’t really like doing my makeup in the bathroom.
Which lead me to leave all my makeup in a travel bag and start doing my hair and makeup in the hallway of my little apartment.
Yes, I would sit on the floor because I never did get around to putting the mirror back up after I re-painted my walls. But the lighting in the hall worked best, which was why I knew when I saw this on the now defunct MODG blog that I had to do it too.
NOTE – The EKBY GRUVAN shelf is no longer available at Ikea, but if you want to see the DIY anyway you can find the beautiful and so inspired original version with instructions at the original source on Ms. Tapioca’s blog.
And here’s my finished product:
By finished I mean it’s kind of a work in progress. I still need to get a chair and a few more trays to go with it. But there you have it – a really easy and fun DIY project – not to mention how girly and indulgent it feels to have such an awesome makeup table!
Now that I have it I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting there playing with my makeup and trying to follow along with tutorials on YouTube. My next task is to learn how to take a decent photograph of my own eye makeup because every time I try I fail miserably.
UPDATE (December 2015): Ikea has discontinued the shelf I used for this vanity. I no longer have mine because my makeup collection outgrew it and I couldn’t stomach trying to move it out of state. But it survived 3 moves before that and still looked as good as the day I first assembled it. If you can find one on craigslist, by all means snatch it up!
UPDATE (December 2016): The EKBY ALEX shelf is my best recommendation now that Ikea’s not making the shelf anymore. It’s a little more expensive and doesn’t have the glass top but the drawers have benefits too!
Whoa! That is so cool, Kate! I’m especially enthralled by your Sephora-esque brush holder 🙂
Thanks, Katie! If you have space for one I definitely recommend it because I love how it makes it easy to see which brush you’re grabbing and looks kind of fancy as well as being functional. I just grabbed some cheap glass beads and a square jar at the craft store but now I’m thinking it would be cute to use a Mason jar too.
That turned out fantastic! I’m impressed by your crafting skills.
We ended up without power for 26 hours since the transformer across the street from our apartment literally exploded on Monday. It was super frustrating since our block didn’t have power but all the building’s a street over did. We’re thankful nothing worse happened though!
Thank you! It was really easy, that blog explained how to do all of it so it was really simple. I’m glad you have power back now! That sounds a little scary and definitely frustrating (I never understand how they rig up our power grids so stuff like that ends up happening, so weird).
I need to live closer to an Ikea. This looks great!
Awesome! I need to do this. I currently sit on the floor in front of a mini ottoman from Target facing the window and prop a mirror up on my open laptop and spread all my products around me. One foot usually falls asleep by the end. Love your mirror too!
Hi Kate,
I would love to put something like this together for my wife. I don’t know where to start, can you provide me information on the table such as model numbers or article numbers so I can start trying to find all furniture pieces.
Thank you.
Arthur,
I’m about to build this within the next two weeks as well. Everything can be bought at Ikea. Here is there blog that explains the instructions:
http://mstapioca.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/diy-ikea-makeup-vanity/
Thank you Stephanie.
Hi Arthur – Good luck! The instructions link is actually already in this post (it’s bolded but it was in the middle of the post so you may have just missed it). Happy building!
Yes I got it!!!!
Thank you guys!!!!!
Thanks for helping Arthur so fast, Stephanie! Hope you love yours as much as I love mine, I just moved again and am still using it though I may run out of space if I don’t stop buying makeup.
Went to Ikea this weekend got all the stuff. Thanks alot guys now my sister, my mother in law, sister and law and her friends want me to build them one. Aaaarrrrggggg!!!!!! LOL!!!!! Wife loved it!!!!!!!
Looks great!! I really love that mirror. Where did u get it? Thank you. Keep up the great work.
Thanks! The mirror is also from Ikea.