My Most Recent Craft Project

Historically, I've never been a huge fan of wearing dangly earrings, but something changed as of late and I started collecting and wearing them. I was tossing them into a decorative box, but then it became a literal manifestation of the proverbial clusterfuck. Inspired by a similar display at my hairdressers, I decided to make a window screen earring holder.

Initially, I thought I'd get an old wooden picture frame from an estate sale, staple some old screen to it, and call it good. Then I realized that I'd need to add extra pieces of wood to the back of whatever I got because it'd be hard to hook the earrings into the screen if it's flush to the wall. Then I was rooting around in a stranger's wood shop at an estate sale and ran across some pieces of wood I thought would work.

I get home and immediately pulled out my staple gun (which is *so* fun to use) and stapled the wood into the frame you see (yep, all of this happened in my dining room. No woodworking room for me!). I then painted it white with acrylic paint. First mistake: paint the wood BEFORE stapling it together. I don't think it was the end of the world, but the painting was a little awkward.

I then made the little earring bar from a couple of smaller pieces of wood I got from the same sale. I knew I needed this particular feature for my hoop earrings. Yes, I literally used a steak knife to saw notches into the little pieces of wood to be able to break them cleanly, then out came the glue gun and the acrylic paint again.

When the frame was dry, I stapled the screen on and then nailed the back pieces onto the frame to hold the screen away from the wall. The bar got glue-gunned on, I used a pair of pliers to screw in eye hooks, and used a wire to hang it onto my wall. Voila! The results aren't professional, but they're functional and *might* qualify for (albeit unintentional) shabby chic. I was even able to get in some episodes from season one of Scrubs while I worked!

In hindsight, a picture frame would've been way easier. I was having a hard time finding one, though, and got impatient (seriously, my earrings were a mess). This was more work, but I feel pretty good about it. It looks much better, and it's easier to see what I have for earrings, too.