Stud Holder

I swear I'll get to the stud holder. But first, some gloating: I have this beautiful set of ombre shelves that I made (I measured, cut and painted the wood and installed the brackets for them). They go wall-to-wall over a recessed window and provide all the shelf storage in my room.

Including a pristine hook display that I implemented (bought a box of hooks from ikea, drilled a ton of tiny holes and screwed the hooks into those holes) to display all my necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings....well...my hanging earrings.

All those studs can't easily be hung from hooks. The super large ones you can kinda squeeze so they sandwich the hook..but they sometimes fall down.

So I set out on a journey to get my studs up on a display. I googled and pinterested until my fingers wearied and my eyes fell out. Then I utilized a piece of stryofoam that I got from a shipment of nuvarings.

And for the past 2 years that piece of styrofoam has been laying on its back on the bottom shelf. But this week I got poster tack to get all those "must do this" papers off my entry table and onto the wall where I can see them (in hindsight a magnetic board probably would have worked, but now I can use the tack anywhere in the room! glory!...or so I thought).

So I embarked on a heroic saga to mount my studs to the wall. I looked at my nuvaring foam holder and while it had served me well I really couldn't cut the back of it at an angle and if the studs are in a vertical piece of styrofoam they just heed gravity. Not good. So as I was thinking I decided to take out my trash and in the refuse room (in NYC apartments there is a teeny room on each floor with recycling and a trash shoot) I found exactly what I needed! Angled pieces of styrofoam! One person's trash really is another's treasure. So I mocked it up into a shape that would sit flush to the wall but let the studs sit at an angle antagonizing gravity with a lip below just in case.

Glueing this together without epoxy was kinda awful...hot glue just melts the styrofoam...so I had to let the glue drip from above - that way it cooled a little before it hit the styrofoam. then I flipped the joint upside down so the glue would stick to both slabs of foam instead of settling into the first piece. Yeah, not optimal.

Then I got to mounting. Remember that poster tack? Well it hates styrofoam. I originally combated this by gluing strips of paper to the back of my foam. I then put it on the wall for a day with no earrings..it eventually fell. Turns out poster tack is really just for paper.

So I decided I should just suck it up and screw it to the wall...what's two more holes when there are 15+ in that wall already? I think it looks quite nice with the earrings:

 

and next to my other jewelry but to be fair it is kinda too large for my existing studs..maybe I'll move more stuff onto it? Maybe I'll paint it? We'll see!