Show off.

Hey, everybody. Here's another view of Spain. Less picturesque scenery, more...roasting flesh.

It was Seville's annual Medieval Marketplace! Huzzah! Besides lots of charred meat, there was food and jewelery and art and dancing and lepers. And dragons.

In one of the jewelry booths, I saw these cute, efficient earring display thingies:


Besides being pretty, they're so practical, especially if you're the girl (guilty!) who has many, many, way too many earrings, and not enough space to display them.

Here's how I upcycled plastic bottles into a reasonable facsimile.

Cut off the bottom off a bottle. If you so desire, decorate the rest.

(I Sharpie-ed on a few black swirls, but anything goes. Decoupage with scrapbook paper. Paint polka-dots. Stencil, spray paint, whatever you can come up with.)

Cut a spiral from bottom to top.

When your spiral is cut, poke holes all along the bottom edge. (Sorry, forgot to take a photo.) If your bottle is flimsy, a hole punch might work. But my bottle was too tough, so I used two methods that worked equally well: hammer and nail, or if you have one, a leather punch.

Poke a hole in the cap (again, hammer and nail work great). Add a loop of cord.

Tie a weight to the hole at the very bottom. Something charming, of course.

Load with lots of earrings and show them off!

I only hung a few here, as an example for the photo. I put one earring in each hole... if it were full, 36 holes would be 18 pairs. Not too shabby. But if you noticed, the jewelry booth people actually hung one pair per hole. Whoa - I could display 36 pairs of earrings on one spiral? That's almost half of my...okay, I lie. That's not nearly half my ridiculous collection. But it's a lot.

Here's another one, made from a smaller, single-serving soda bottle:

I used the cut-off bottom, upside down, as both the weight and bonus display space.

Nifty, eh? Plus, I get to file it under my very favorite category...Pretty Much Free. Go ahead, make one for yourself & be a showoff. I have to go now - I think I need to make some more earrings.