DIY Framed Earring Holder & Display

I took my 4-year-old daughter to get her ears pierced for her birthday in September. She had been asking about earrings for a little while and I always figured I would take her when she asked, so… her 4th birthday seemed like just the occasion to do it.

I left the piercing earrings in her ears for months. I didn’t have much desire to deal with changing them out, to be honest. And her little flower earrings were perfectly cute for every day of the week.

Then my mom took Nora on a day date to see the new Cinderella movie, followed by a trip to the mall. They came back with a pair of pink dolphin earrings, and so it began. The first few times I changed them out, she complained about me hurting her so we went a few months without her asking to change them very often. But last weekend, Nora and I went to the mall together—a very, VERY rare occurrence—to shop for me. I needed some new clothing items and it was a cold, rainy Sunday. Plus, just her and Mommy? She was happy to tag along. She was really quite good for the three hours we were gone, although I did deal with an expected amount of exasperated sighs and looks of boredom. And even a teeny bit of whining. But hell, I’m 32 years old and I still remember the torture of shopping with my mom—FOR my mom—as a kid, so I had some extra patience with her just due to my sympathy.

Anyway, since these trips are rare, it was more than just an afternoon at the mall. It was an “activity” for Nora and I to do together. I figured to cap it off at the end, I would take her to Claire’s and let her pick out a pair of earrings for good behavior. So we did just that, except they were having a buy 2, get 1 free sale and I fell for it and let her walk out with three pairs instead. :)

All this to say that we now have 10 total little earrings to keep track of, and I’m sure the collection will keep growing. Up until now, she had random earrings lying out on her dresser just begging to get lost. So I wanted to buy her a little box or something to keep them in. I had my ears pierced when I was 3 years old and I quickly built up a collection of probably 100 pairs of earrings. I had them all in a little box and I vividly remember digging through them each morning to decide which ones to wear. So fun. But also time consuming.

When I said something to my mom about finding a box, she mentioned one of these display doohickeys instead. I was thinking about buying one until I realized how easy it would be to make.

A couple of Pinterest photos, a few minutes foraging in the basement, and a quick stop into JoAnn Fabrics and I had a plan of action and supplies.

Are you ready for this? It’s pretty complicated. :)

Either buy a cheap picture frame, or find an old one in your house to upcycle. I was planning to spray paint an old wooden one I found in my basement until I found this one in a box from college. Depending on how many earrings you have to store, you can use any size frame you’d like. This one is a 5×7″. Remove the glass and backing. You won’t need them at all for this, so if you have an old frame with the glass broken out of it—even more perfect!

You’ll also need a sheet of “plastic canvas” (that’s what the craft stores call it). It’s plastic mesh, really, and you can find it in the children’s craft aisle. At least that’s where I found it in my local JoAnn Fabrics. It was only $0.79 for a decent sized sheet. Using everyday scissors, cut it down to size for your frame.

Lay your sheet of mesh inside your frame. Using a hot glue gun, go around the edges with glue. If necessary (depending on the style of your frame), smoosh glue into the mesh with a plastic knife or other MacGyver tool. Work only a little bit at a time and go quickly, as the glue dries very fast. Make sure the mesh is flat and secured by the glue. Do another layer of glue if needed.

Flip it over and you’re DONE! It’s really that simple. This took me like 10 minutes, and that included the time I spent running for extra glue sticks upstairs, and searching my kitchen for a tool to use to smoosh the glue into the crevices.

If you’d like to hang the earring holder from the wall, you can add a ribbon to the top. I wanted my daughter to be able to grab it herself, and bring it downstairs or whatever for easy earring changing. She has room on her dresser for it to lean against the wall, so we didn’t need a hanger.

Load it up with your earrings and you are good to go. As you can see, Nora has pretty eclectic taste so far. :) And we have plenty of room for more earrings before we’ll need to upgrade to an 8×10″ some day.

Total cost of this project was the whopping $0.79 I spent on the plastic canvas. You can’t get much more affordable than that!