Dog Coats - Water repellant; Light reflective

This is Margo, the Grande Dame of our Italian Greyhound pack (totalling 2 members).  She's modeling her new winter coat!  It's light weight but warm, water repellant, and light reflective.  The outer layer of fabric is a beautiful silver nylon, and there is light reflective piping running from her shoulders to the top of her rump, from her chest to her thighs, and around the back end of the coat from one side of the groin tuck to the other.

 

The coat is lined in a medium-weight flannel in a blue and grey tartan.  The snaps are hammered on, as opposed to being sewn on.  On previous coats, I used the sew-on variety, but the thread would eventually get cut by the sides of the metal snaps.

 

 

 

 

And this is Sophie, our other Iggy, modeling her identical coat.  We took this picture in the garage to show the light reflective qualities of the piping.  I would call this coat a HUGE success!

 

 

Now that it's Daylight Savings Time, it's almost dark when I get home from work.  Now that these coats are finished, I'll feel a lot more comfortable walking our girls at night.  They're such low-riders that most people don't notice them even during the day...

 

And just in case you were wondering, I made the pattern myself, by holding a sheet of brown craft paper up to my dog while she was standing, and tracing a general outline along her spine, down her back legs, across her under carriage, and back up along the chest and shoulders. We adopted Margo about 6 years ago, and over the years, that rough sketch has been transferred into a pattern and refined as I have made several coats for her.  It's now a perfect fit, including darts at the rump to keep the coat tucked down around the body to keep more warmth in. 

Nail Polish Holder

I have a thing for nail polish. It’s inexpensive, it’s fun, and it’s EVERYWHERE. So, I tend to make a lot of “on a whim” purchases. I’m even known to buy repeats of certain colors, ‘cause I like ‘em that much! Not a big deal in and of itself, but storing this collection has been a pain. Those plastic shoeboxes hold a lot of bottles, but it’s hard to see the colors. I thought about ordering some of the display units that a salon would use, but then realized that I have precious little wall space to hang one on. Also, the ones that were affordable weren’t really my style.

Soooo, I pondered. And I mulled. And I eyeballed the available space in my closet and the vanity area and made mental notes to self. And, is often my way, I percolated the idea until it finally hit me…

If you’ve seen some of my other posts, you may know that I’m quite fond of a line of silver-colored, metal mesh storage boxes that can be found at The Container Store and online. I’ve used CD boxes, DVD boxes, in/out baskets, and even file folder boxes to organize my kitchen, bathroom vanity, and garage.

For this project, I zoned in on the smallest members of this collection, baskets designed to organize drawers and small spaces. I found that one of the sizes fit perfectly in a small amount of un-used, floor-to-ceiling wall space in my closet. It measures 6” x 3” x 2”, and is super inexpensive. And, depending on the shape of the bottle, 6 – 10 bottles can fit in each bin.

So, it just became a matter of how to hang them on the wall! I finally decided that buying two 7.5’ lengths of small-gauge chain from the hardware store would be the way to go. I used molly bolts in the drywall, ‘cause a nail polish collection can be deceptively heavy. I threaded a couple of washers onto the screw, then the top link of the chain, then a couple more washers, and then threaded the screw into the plastic sleeve that I had pounded into the drywall. Adding the washers helped the chain move freely, without scratching the wall.

Once I hung both bits of chain, it was simply a matter of hanging the little mesh bins and filling them. I used pliers to open up additional links of chain. I opened both ends, as one end would need to hook into the bin, and the other end would need to hook into the chain hanging from the wall. I then inserted a hook into the center of the side of each bin, at the very top, and crimped it closed.

Leave the other end of the link open, so it can be hooked onto the chain that hangs on the wall. I decided to leave the hook affixed to the bin, so I could remove them and replace them as I needed to. This allows me to replace the bins at different heights if I need to, either out of laziness (don’t want to bend down to put it near the floor) or to accommodate something taller, like a detail pen or a bottle of polish remover. However, you could just as easily affix the “hook” links to the chain (by crimping the hook closed once looped through the chain) and leave the open end for the bins. Either way would work, you just wouldn’t have as much flexibility in where to put the bins with the hooks affixed to the chain.