Craft Post - Necklace Display

Hello everyone.

Last night I had decided to make a necklace display (yes, the very same necklace display that are commonly found in jewelry stores). I admit that I had been meaning to make something like this for a long while now, ever since I had bought some hime necklaces from Taobao. Said necklaces are currently lying on my work table, which at the moment is cluttered with junk -.- (got to clean that up and also explains why one of my photos show clutter in the background) and it doesn't help much that my necklace wall is already full of previous necklaces that I had accumulated overtime.  Well come to think about it, I guess I could take the hard way out by just hanging my hime necklaces on my already-full necklace wall and just switching them when it comes time to change necklaces, but I will probably find that annoying and the necklaces are just too pretty to just hang on the wall :/.

Going a little off-topic here, one of my lifelong goals (or what seems to be lifelong goals) is to have a princess-like room that is also like a shop. In other words, just think of it as a Jesus Diamante shop but in a room format. I got the shop idea from my sister, who apparently made it her lifelong goal to raid my closet and steal rent my clothes xD. The idea got stuck in my head ever since and hence the obsession with making a necklace display (so to display my pretty hime necklaces <3).

Now with that over and done with, I won't bore you anymore with my rambling and get straight to the good stuff!  Keep in mind that this is how I did my necklace display, so it is not the right exact way to make a necklace display. 

Materials used: 
- cardboard
- scrap paper
- ruler
- black felt
- pencil
- utility knife
- glue gun (not shown)
- scissors (not shown)

I had first started off with looking at Violet's necklace display tutorial followed by googling images of other generic necklace displays (you could say I got a bit inspired by both the tutorial and the images). I don't have a cheap necklace display that I can mess around with so I decided to make mine out of scratch by using cardboard. I was fortunate enough to have some cardboard sheets lying around underneath my bed, which I had managed to save from who-knows-what (I forgot where I had gotten the cardboard from ^^;). As for the scrap paper, I am a little bit of a perfectionist (or at least try to be) and therefore I would just draw the shape that I want on the paper first and then transfer it to the cardboard. Tedious but effective. In terms of the black material used, I was actually at first at a standstill between regular black fabric or black felt. The black fabric that I currently have in my crafts drawer was from Walmart`s long decimated fabric department, so I try not to use too much of it. In the end, I had decided to use black felt, considering that I can just get some more from the dollar store and felt as a whole is definitely more cheaper to use than fabric.

So after getting the general shape of the necklace display, I copied the shape onto the scrap paper and cut it out. However, in order to assure myself that I get the same shape on both sizes, I folded the paper in half and only draw on one side. I then cut out that side to get both sides the same shape that I wanted. 

I`m aware that my camera is not picking out some of the lines that I had drew on the cardboard so I apologize for that. Basically, what I did here was that I traced the shape of the necklace display that I had made onto the cardboard. I had to be careful when tracing however, as the paper is very thin. 

This was what the necklace display looked like after cutting it out by using the utility knife.

This was the necklace display in the process of getting wrapped by black felt. 

This was the necklace display after getting wrapped by black felt. After wrapping the curved sections, there were these huge leftover chunks of felt hanging behind (or in this case, in front of) the necklace display. I did not really like how they look even when wrapped around the cardboard so I just cut them off (which I had already done for one side). 

     

         

The (sorta) finished necklace display, respectively the front and back. I know that the back does not look as good as the front, but it is the front that matters right? I had originally intended to leave the display like this and just leaning it against the shelf wall, but it turned out that getting the necklace off the stand was made more difficult when it was right against the wall and there was no room to get the necklace off -.-.

I eventually solved the problem by gluing a triangular piece of cardboard on the back to form a stand. :D

There we go! Much better and finally finished! :D

The necklace display in action on one of my shelves. Now that I am done the project, I am very glad that I had decided to use black felt. The felt gave the display a realistic touch similar to that of real necklace displays. I will definitely make more, considering that I have at least three hime necklaces (hime = big flower/bow) and some sparkly gems and pearl necklaces that is currently hanging on my necklace wall. Of course considering that it is made out of cardboard, I still have to be careful with the displays, since the big flowers and bows along with the pearls made the necklaces heavy and the display can tip over. Fortunately, it is a matter that can be solved by just moving the necklaces more downward to distribute the weight more to the front and making it less likely to tip backwards. 

Hope you enjoyed my first craft post. I will definitely be making more in the future :D!