Displaying, Organizing and Caring for Handcrafted Earrings

Earrings can be a beautiful way to frame your face and bring a little sparkle to any outfit. Even if you're not going to wear any other jewelry, earrings can really jazz up your look for the day.You can make them relatively quickly and before you know it you have lots of pairs of earrings.How do you keep them all organized and cared for?Storing and Displaying Earrings:I know from the annual Earrings Every Day Month (now called Earrings Extravaganza and held each September) I have tons of earrings in different styles, colors and lengths.For a long time they were in drawers in my jewelry armoire and embarrassingly in a mostly jumbled up mess. Anytime I wanted to wear earrings had to dig through and find them and they were never in pairs.Then I made myself a Canvas Earring Holder. (There's a tutorial to make your own here.)

And then I made 4 canvas earring holders.

I love how my jewelry feels like art. All of my pairs are together and they're grouped by color and style. It's really easy for me to find exactly the right pair of earrings.There are all kinds of organizers and tools you can buy to get your earrings organized if you don't want to make your own.This earring holder is really cute, but it only holds 2 pairs of earrings.

You could hang them on a jar or vase on your dresser.

If it works for you, could keep them in a drawer. If you put them in individual baggies by pair then you could keep them more organized.Other ideas include: pretty decorative boxes, tea cups or pretty bowls on top of your dresser.Organizing Your Earrings:If your earrings are currently a jumbled up mess, you'll need to organize them first.1. Dump them out somewhere you can spread them out.2. Separate earrings by color (or by whatever way makes sense for you. It could be style or length, etc.)3. Pair up your earrings.4. Are you missing any? If you don't have complete pairs, you can take apart the earring you have left to make something else, set it aside to make another earring to match or donate it to Goodwill or another thrift store.5. Are there any other pairs that you no longer will wear? Again, you can take them apart or donate them.6. Now place them in whatever storage/display solution you're going to use.Care of Handmade Earrings:Handmade earrings really are artwork and should be treated as such. I joke about my jumbled up drawer, but that is really no way to treat handmade earrings. They should be carefully place on or in whatever storage or display you're keeping them in/on.If they start to tarnish, very carefully use a polishing cloth to clean them. If you have some sort of wire wrapped element, be very careful when cleaning the wire wrapped aspect of the earrings.For the earrings I made, I do not recommend submerging them in a cleaning solution for a variety of reasons:

• I often use vintage or repurposed items. Submerging them may not be good for every piece.
• If you use a polishing cloth, you have total control over what is happening.
• A polishing cloth won't damage stones and beads.
• If you use a protective seal of any kind (like I put on my hardware jewelry), a polishing cloth won't remove the protective seal.