Preventing tarnish, DIY style

 

I recently had a story run in The Dallas Morning News with ideas for storing holiday dinnerware and silver.  The coolest part of it, I thought, was the idea for making silvercloth bags to prevent tarnish.  They posted a slide show with my step-by-step instructions for making these bags.  You can check that out here if you like.

Brighten up your bookcase

In recent years it seems it’s become fashionable to line bookcases and china cabinets with color.  The technique makes a piece of furniture that’s typically dark lighter and more fun.  Here are a couple images to show what I’m talking about:

From A Browner Brown.

From D Home magazine.

I recently bought these two Henredon china cabinets on Craigslist and wanted to create a pop of color on the inside.  I really didn’t want to paint the cabinets themselves but wanted the same effect.

Instead, I had a specialty lumberyard cut down four masonite panels, which I then painted and put in the back of the cabinets.

Masonite is a “green” material made from recycled stuff.  It’s the same material you sometimes see movers use to put down over floors so they don’t damage the floors with their hand trucks.  The lumberyard guys used a table saw to cut them down, which worked well, and then I used my Dremel to notch the edge in a couple spots for the electrical cords for the cabinet lighting.

I think they turned out quite well.

What Bevo says about getting better pub

Varsity China plate, from The Dallas Morning News. 

A couple weeks ago I had a brief story in The Dallas Morning News about a company that makes these cool plates with university motifs on them.  I pitched the product after seeing it in a china shop.

A woman named Brandy Medford who lives in Houston started Varsity China and apparently the company is doing quite well.  What hadn’t helped her was taking out some expensive ads in the UT alumni publication.  She said she sold maybe a couple off that print ad, which cost thousands of dollars.  Had that money gone towards PR instead, I imagine the results would have been better.  Also, one thing that made it much harder to get this story done was that she had no high resolution photos of her product.

Thus, Bevo’s two lessons for small businesses are 1) consider PR in your marketing budget, and 2) get some photos done.  Hook ’em.