Necklace Rack for Less Than $1

I had been keeping my necklaces on a store-bought rack that was quite pretty, but it left them tangled up and discouraged me from wearing them. So I've been thinking for awhile of something to make to display them in a neat manner, making them easy to get to. Found tons of ideas on Pintrest, but they all required tools or supplies that I didn't have on hand. So on my last trip to Walmart, I spotted a 5-gallon paint stirrer. A nice, flat, shapely wooden stick for 28 cents. Perfect! Pretty sure I could afford that. So here is how you make a 28-cent necklace rack (assuming you have the other supplies on hand like I did).

Supplies:
1. 5-gallon wooden paint stirring stick
2. Paint
3. Nails
4. Measuring tape or ruler
5. Ribbon
6. Stapler or hot glue
7. Hammer

Step One

Paint the stirrer in the color of your choice. I chose white. Let it dry completely before doing another coat and letting that dry as well.

(I really need to work on taking pictures as I do my projects, but I did this one over the course of a few days)

Step Two

Lay the ruler or measuring tape on the stirrer and mark of 1-inch increments in pencil.

Step Three

Staple or hot glue a ribbon to the back. Since I experimented with this first, I will tell you two things I did wrong here. 1: I tied knots on the ribbon ends. I later had to take them out to make the hammering easier. 2: I didn't staple as closely to the top as I could have. This makes it tilt forward once hung up. So, not knots and staple/hot glue close to the top. Okay? Okay.

This is more secure than it looks, btw...

Step Four

This step is best not done on your dining room table. Gather your hammer and nails, go outside, and hammer nails into the spots you marked off earlier. Make sure they will all be tilted a little bit upward when it is hung up. Downward-pointed nails = necklaces on the ground. No bueno.

See how my ribbon is sticking out of the end because I had to untie the knots here? Yep. Just trimmed that off.

Step Five

Hang it. A little more trial-and-error happened here. I first tried hanging it on one nail. Yeah, not so smart. I couldn't keep it balanced. So I used ever-so-classy clear push pins. Two of them. This helped stabilize it. Now you are ready to display your jewelry!

I never noticed how many heart necklaces I had...

Project Earring Storage

So what happened to all of my projects I said I was gonna do, huh? Yeah, I don't know either. Laziness. Since I've been home sick with nowhere to go and no energy to do anything, I've been spending a lot of time on Pintrest getting ideas for pretty much everything. Organizing, crafts, decorating, baking... literally everything. I love the site. I have so many new ideas that I want to get started on when I get better and have motivation. But I thought I'd do a post in my blog showing one of my ideas and one idea I stole from somewhere else. How I store my earrings.

Stolen idea:

I keep my studs, hoops, and some dangling earrings in ice cube trays. It makes it SO easy to keep them paired up and easy to get to. I use to put my studs on a lacy ribbon hung on the wall. It was really cute, but it wasn't convenient to hang them up easily at the end of the day. So I searched around for other ideas. I really didn't want to put them all in one container because it makes it hard to see what your options are. Then I saw this somewhere. Maybe a magazine. Maybe online. No idea. But it's perfect! Since it's not too cute, I put them in a drawer so I don't have to look at them all the time. You can stack them if you want, also.

Own idea:

Pardon the crooked picture. This is definitely cuter than ice cube trays and I love having it displayed. =) I got a cheap frame on sale at a craft store (Dollar Tree, Goodwill, garage sale, one lying around, wherever). Took out the glass and cardboard and all so all it was was the wooden frame. Stapled a piece of that plastic grid whatnot that kids use for easy cross-stitching to the back. There are a lot of colors to choose from, but I like how black shows off the earrings. Stapled a ribbon to the top. You could also use mounting hardware, but ribbons and staples are so much easier. I thought I was done after this, but I encountered a problem when I hung it up. Since the back of the frame was flush against the wall, all of the hooks of the earrings were pushed upward and fell out. Um, oops! So, to create some distance between the wall and the hooks, I put some push pins where the corners of the frame would hit the wall. Perfect!





So there you have. Two easy solutions to a problem I'm sure a lot of accessory-loving ladies have. I have an idea of something to do with all of my necklaces next, but I need to find our drill and get some supplies first... so that will have to wait. =)