make:jewellery holder

I don't wear all that much jewellery (for interesting discussion on spelling - see here) but as far as earrings go I've been trying to at least deviate slightly from my standard stainless steel, hypoallergenic, plain, boring studs.

One of my difficulties was all my earrings were dumped together in my jewellery box and as I walked out the door in the morning I didn't have the time to spend looking for a matched pair, let alone find something that coordinated with what I was wearing. I've sort of been looking for solutions but not very hard. I've self inflicted a rather tight budget at the minute trying to save for a few other things and pay off the last tiny bit of our trip (doesn't matter how much you budget for travel, you never get it right) so I didn't want to spend too much money.

Today I solved my problem. I found 2 photo frames at the local recycling centre for a total of $4 and then bought $3.50 worth of aluminium fly screen from the hardware store. This tends to be a lot stiffer than ordinary fibreglass fly screen which is what I was going for. I raided B's drawer for the glue gun and I was set. 

In addition to the above I grabbed my A3 cutting mat and a craft knife.

First I took the back off and removed the glass. This was only ever intended to be a trial run as the paint job on the frame is pretty terrible. I'm saving my preferred frame until I get a chance to paint it myself. At this point I may redo this one as well.

I used the glass as a template to cut the aluminium fly screen to size.

I then sat the fly screen in the frame instead of the glass and ran the hot glue gun around the inside edge of the frame. I haven't used a glue gun for a while and have to remind myself that in this case - more is better. Within reason.

I allowed the glue to dry and then tested it out. Perfect. Once I collected the materials it took me less than 10 minutes to pull it together. Considering the amount of time it will save me it was definitely worth it!

This is now sitting on a shelf in my room in full view. I've added the rest of my earrings to it and found a few pairs that I'm missing one of. I also discovered how many pairs of cheap ones I have that I never wear because they hurt my ears and will be throwing them out.

The only downside to this is it doesn't work particularly well for hoops. I'm planning on adding a piece of ribbon or similar across the next one to have something to wrap the hoops around. For the time being the ones I have seem to clip into the mesh reasonably securely. 

Day twenty-five : make something to hold my earrings.