The Winged Heart

I’ve been wanting something to hang my necklaces on for a long time.  My necklaces always end up in a big pile inside a jewelry box or zippered pouch, and they inevitable get miserably tangled up.  So I end up never wearing any necklaces because it takes too long to untangle the one I want at the time!  I was cleaning the other day and finally untangled and sorted all of my necklaces and decided it was time for a necklace holder.  It seemed like a  silly thing to spend money on though, so I decided to make one myself.

I didn’t take any photos along the way, but here’s a step-by-step process of what I did.  If you don’t have some of the materials or tools, read through all the steps anyway and see if you can improvise with something else!  The cardboard I used was from a birthday gift I was sent from my mother-in-law from Piperlime.   The box the gift came in was lined with this adorable lime pattern!  The pattern is great for cutting straight lines and making marks for the pins since you have the guide of the lime shapes.  I also used this cardboard to make a bulletin board.  If you don’t have any cute cardboard on hand, you could paint a piece the way you like, or cut a piece of fabric or decorative paper to go over the front.  Also, this hanger is meant to be nailed directly in to the wall.  It might not be the best solution if you need something you can take down and move often, or if your home has restrictions on nailing things in the wall.  And sorry for the long instructions, I just want to make sure everything is clear since I didn’t take any process pictures!

Materials:

• Corrugated cardboard (amount varies for size of  holder.  have enough for two layers at your desired size)
• Utility knife or scissors
• White glue or crazy glue
• Tape
• Bobby pins (enough for how many “holder” pieces you want.  I used 10.  This is a great way to use bobby pins that are already too stretched out to put in your hair, like ones that were used for a special occasion up-do.  Unfolded paper clips could be an alternative.)
• Pliers
• Small screwdriver, ice pick, or something else sharp, thin, and pointy (this will be used to make the holes for the pins)
• Hammer (just to punch a clean hole in the cardboard with the pointy tool)
• Chip bag clips, hair claws, any kind of small, springy clip (this will hold your cardboard together while the glue dries)

Process:

Step 1: Decide how big you want your holder to be.  I made mine about 11 inches wide and 3.75 inches tall.  Think about how many holder spots you want it to have and how much space you want it to take up on the wall.

Step 2: Measure and cut 2 pieces of corrugated cardboard to the size you determined in Step 1.  One piece will be the front, and one piece will be the back.  If you have a pretty piece of cardboard, or one piece looks nicer than the other, choose this to be the front piece.  If one piece turns out smaller than the other, it would serve better as the back piece so that it looks nice from the front.  Hold your piece up on the wall where you plan to hang it to make sure it looks good and is a good size.

Step 3: Measure and mark where you want the pins to come through on the front piece.   I made two rows and staggered them so there was room for the necklaces on the top row to hang down.

Step 4: Using your sharp pointy tool of choice and hammer, punch a small hole in each mark you made in Step 3.  Make sure the hole is big enough for the front prong of a bobby pin to poke through, but not so big that it can fall out easily.

Step 5: Stretch out your bobby pins to about a 45 degree angle.  The flat part will end up being flat against the back of the front piece, while the front wavy part will stick through the holes and come out the front, so make sure it’s an angle where the necklaces will hang on and not slide off.  Try to keep all your pins consistent so they look nice on the final product.  If you want to paint your pins to match the colors of your cardboard/fabric/paper, now is the time!  (I didn’t have any paint, or I would’ve made mine white!)

Step 6: Take a stretched out bobby pin and poke the front prong (the wavy part) through one of the holes you punched in the front piece, from the back of the piece.  The wavy part should be sticking out from the front of the cardboard, while the flat piece is hidden on the other side, flat against the cardboard.  Do this for all your pins and holes.

Step 7: Use some scotch tape to tape flat prongs in place on the back of the front piece.  Again, the flat part of the pin should be flat against the back of the front piece, and vertical.  If you were looking at the cardboard from the side, the flat prong should point at 12:00 and the wavy prong should point at 1:30 or 2:00.

Step 8: If the pins on your top row are sticking out past the top of the front piece, you have two choices:  use the pliers to bend and cut the excess bobby pin, or use the pliers to bend and curve the excess bobby pin into a hook shape (hooking towards the back) which will hook over the back piece once it is affixed.  It seemed pretty hard to snap the excess pin off with pliers, so I chose the second option.  It’s a little confusing, but basically you just bend the pins backwards as if you were going to hook the whole hanger onto the back of a door or something.  Don’t bend them all the way, since you will still need to put the back piece on later and finish hooking them over it.  This part isn’t vital to the construction of your hanger, it’s just a way to make it prettier!  You could always bend the pins forward instead and use them to hold rings or something too.

Step 9: Use white glue or crazy glue to better affix the flat prongs to the back of the front piece.  Also, add some blobs of glue to the front and back of the holes where the pin goes through the cardboard.  This will keep your pins from being wobbly.  Now is a good time to check and make sure all your pins are pointing at the same angle and look nice from the front.  Let the glue dry before moving to the next step.

Step 10:  Glue the back piece of cardboard to the back of the front piece.  This will hide all of your bobby pin/tape/glue mess and maybe help your pins stay stable as well.  Reinforce your pin areas with the glue in this step, and make sure your glue extends to the edges of the cardboard so it doesn’t start to come apart.  Also, if you are hooking your top pins, make sure you aren’t gluing the hooks between the two pieces somehow (the two pieces should lay fairly flat together).  You can’t really put a heavy book or anything on top of the cardboard to make sure the two pieces fuse because of the pins sticking out, so I clamped chip bag clips and hair claws all along the edges of mine to make sure they stayed stuck together long enough for the glue to dry.

Step 11:  Once the glue is totally dry, use the pliers to finish hooking your top pins over the back of the back piece (if you chose not to snap them off).

Step 12:  Test the stability of your pins and make sure they’re not wobbly.  If they are, a little more glue around the hole might help.  If it doesn’t, it’s not a big deal.

Step 13:  You’re done!  It’s time to hang up your beautiful handiwork.  I used a small nail on each of the corners and in the middle.  If you can’t nail things into your wall, or if you are worried about destroying the whole thing if you need to move it someday, try and come up with an alternative hanging solution.  Putting it on a string might let you hang it on something already in the room.  You might also try attaching it to a hanger and hanging it in your closet.  If you can put those sticky plastic hooks on your walls, you might be able to just rest the hanger on two of those.

Step 14:  Hang up all your necklaces!  No matter how messy your hanger ended up looking, it will look better now because there is pretty jewelry hanging from it.  Stand back and admire your handiwork and resourcefulness, and revel in the fact that you will pick out necklaces with ease from this day forward!