tutorials

PRETTY PROJECT

photos/post/design: Kristin Ess

Have you ever taken a peek behind-the-scenes on a photoshoot? More often than not, there is a big vanity with a lot of lightbulbs around it which help us see every little detail with our client’s face + hair. Lighting is incredibly important when you’re getting ready and it can be quite tricky if the room where you’re getting ready is darker or if you’re getting ready to out at night. As you may know we’ve partenered up with Target for the month of May to see what beauty favorites we could introduce you to… and now we need a new place to put it all! Today we’re going to show you how to build your own vanity at home for less than it costs to buy one (because let’s face it, vanities with lights are NOT cheap!).

We ordered the desk, the mirror and the lights online. We also ordered some small nails, but you may have some already. Below, you can find the links to the things we ordered along with the price.

• Carson Desk ($82)– Assembly for this table took about 20 minutes. PS- IT’S ON SALE RIGHT NOW! Hooray!
• Threshold Flat Mirror ($35)– Prep the mirror with the small nails before you hang the mirror. I put the nails about 6″ apart.
• String Lights (order these online $11.99 or pick up these in-store $12.99) – String the lights around the mirror using the nails to hold them up. There will be excess lights so you can either go around again or you can take the bulbs out and gather the cord behind the desk with a rubberband (which is what we chose to do.) Wish we could have found these lights with white cords, but no such luck! The ones we got still looked great.
• Accessorize with anything you want! Here you can see we love a good mix of makeup, flowers and sparkly jewelry on the vanity. It’s really fun to style with your own pretty things.

We know the grand total of $130 still isn’t cheap, but it’s a fraction of what we’ve found out there for vanities with lights and we think it’s well worth the investment. Follow TBD + TARGET on Pinterest for more fun beauty finds!