crafting: jewelry trees

Over the years, I have stashed away a lot of jewelry bits and pieces-broken items, clip-on earrings that I will never wear-and this year I was finally inspired to put them to use.  My inspiration came from a diminutive jewelry tree that I purchased a couple of years ago.  I have seen (and own) a number of larger and three dimensional vintage jewelry trees, but something about the petite size of this one really struck a chord with me. 

I gathered a stack of vintage and dollar store frames, then nabbed some red and green fabric off the remnants cart at the fabric store.  To make the background for the jewelry trees, I simply measured and cut my fabric using the cardboard backing from the frame, then cut and hot glued the fabric to the cardboard.  After removing the glass from the frame, I slipped this fabric covered base in, and was ready to go.

Muffin tins are great for helping to organize any craft project.  Here I use them to sort and contain my various jewelry bits, but you could also use them for beads, shells, buttons, or other baubles. 

Once I had a few frames ready, I perused my jewelry selection to come up with fun and festive combos, then worked them into an approximate tree shape on the frame.  When I got the look that I wanted, I clipped off any earring backs or other fasteners (using a needle nose pliers and a heavy duty wire cutter), so that everything would sit fairly flush on the frame.  Then, I hot glued the pieces onto the fabric. 

The process quickly became rather addicting, and before I knew it, I had an entire forest of jewelry trees.
Each one is lovely and unique, and they will make really excellent Christmas gifts for a number of people on my list.  (okay-I'm keeping a few too-like the pair below!)