I Needed This Idea!

And I can’t take credit for it :)
Kristy Plessman, one of the two incredible photographers for Scrapbook Trends shared this idea with me.

I’ve been saying to myself every time I open my drawer of earrings that I need a better solution. A way to hang my earrings up so I can see what I have, and find the pair I want. Kristy is just like me. She loves taking something ugly and making it wonderful. She’s an Optimistic Recycler too!!

K, so the concept is simple, the execution I found is just a little tricky, since I didn’t get instructions from Kristy, but I figured out a couple things to make it easier. I made two at once, but I'll show you the how-to for the easy one :)

Check this out!
It’s a picture frame with chicken wire inside it!

I had the frame from a yard sale… .50 cents. And the Chicken wire at ACE was $2.51 a foot.
Here’s the low down:

Old frame… Looks like maybe Bill Clinton painted the picture in it :D (& signed it with a sharpie!)

Remove the picture and sand the frame down slightly.
Spray paint it. (I used a dark bronze hammerite)

Cut a piece of chicken wire larger than the frame opening by 1.5” on each side.
Cut the corners of the chicken wire out -to the opening of the frame. (I used a monster pair of tin snips… the same pair I used to cut through the bamboo blind if you saw my post when I converted a screen and used a blind in the openings. From June 3rd 2008)

(Optional) At this point I spray painted one side of the chicken wire with the same spray paint.
On a surface that has a sharp corner, bend the wire from cut-out-corner to cut-out-corner. If you got your cut-out-corners correct, this folded edge should allow your chicken wire to fit nicely inside the frame. *Don’t rely on the lines in the wire to be straight… they aren’t. This is why corner to corner is so important.

Use a staple gun to attach the chicken wire into the frame. In my case, the front edge was too shallow to staple into, so I stapled into the other edge… worked fine!

Once all the edges are stapled in and you have the chicken wire in place, fold the raised sides over onto the back of the frame and staple it down.

Many frames don’t have much space from the point at which glass would normally sit to the back where it would sit on the wall… So, because I’m using this for earrings, and I need the earrings to have room between the wire and the wall, I used this…

And I just put it around the edge of the wire. This not only holds the frame slightly further from the wall, but it protects the wall from the scratchy cut edge of the wires.

Then I just needed a hanger on top, so I went to my box of goodies and found something that I think came with the microwave… who cares where it’s from… I used it! I cut the foam insulation out of the way, and screwed it in!

Viola!

I do have a couple more tips…. I learned that since chicken wire doesn’t have a lot of strength, and is never perfectly flat, a frame this size… (20x16") is probably the biggest you’d want to go. Much bigger, and the wire could bend inside the frame and there would be areas where the wire is closer to the wall. Which might impede earrings hanging on it. If you have Loads of earrings, I’d recommend you make more than one frame, rather than go bigger.
And lastly, if you hang all your earrings on one side, it will hang crooked :P

I hope you love this idea as much as I do. Thanks Kristy!!