DIY: Hanging Necklace Holders

I'm about to move, so I've gotten really into DIY and interior decoration, in preparation for trying to make my scruffy student flat look a lot nicer. This is a really, really cheap and useful project I came up with recently, and I think it's worth sharing!


Necklace storage is such a hassle, because if you do it wrong you'll either end up with a tangled mess or have your jewellery in a place that makes it forgettable. Because they're so beautiful, it's nice to be able to display them too.

Note that this DIY uses Pianola Roll spools. I've had some of these lying around, for a while, having decided they were perfect for upcycling, but if you don't have that specific circumstance atm, head to an opshop or online auction. They're basically worthless artifacts, besides maybe a couple of rare or mint condition ones, so go no higher than $2 (NZD) each.


Things I used:

-Pianola Roll spool(s)
-Classic white string (the kind everyone has that never seems to run out!)
-Scissors
-Clear glue

The ingredients are pretty flexible. I used the string to decorate my spools, but you could use anything else, eg, wool, paint, paper or fabric. You don't even need a Pianola Roll spool exactly! I think they're perfect for this, but if you have something else floating around your house you think will work, try that. This DIY assumes the exact process I used will be replicated.


Method:


1. Strip your Pianola Roll sheets off so you have a naked spool. The box and sheets of the Pianola Roll could totally be used for some other project, so keep them if you want.


2. You'll find that one of the Pianola Roll spool handles either comes off completely or comes out just a little- this will be where you want to end up at, so start at the other handle. Keeping the string attached to the string spool, tie it tightly to the Pianola Roll spool, pushing it as close as possible to the handle.

3. Use a tab of glue to secure the knot. You could also use clear nail varnish. Dab a bit of glue and lay down the loose piece of string. 4. Start wrapping the string as tight as possible around the spool, going over the loose end of string to secure it.

5. It takes about 20-40 minutes to wrap a spool. Keep going around and around. It's a good thing to do whilst listening to a podcast or watching TV. If you need to get up at any point, place the spool down and use something heavy to keep the string taut. Every so often, dab a bit of glue on the spool and wrap over it, just to keep things secure.

6. When you've reached the end, pop out the handle a little bit and wrap in this small gap a couple of times. Tie a tight knot. Snip off the string and use glue to secure the knot and the shortened end of string.

7. Cut a long piece of string and tie it around the middle of your spool (or do it twice towards each end). To find the middle, tie the string loosely around approximately the centre point, then holds the string, dangling the spool in mid air. Move the string along the middle section until the spool hangs perpendicular to the string it dangles on. Tie a tight double knot, then use glue to secure the knot and the string that wraps around the spool.

8. Tie a knot and push a pin or nail through the string loop, attaching it to a wall or pinboard. I think these look nicer in duos, so make another if yours looks lonely or you have a lot of jewellery.

9. When adding necklaces, remember that you'll also need to be able to take them off! You could make it so you have to undo the clasp to take the necklace off, or simply place the necklace over the spool and pull the pendant through the loop created, so it can just be pulled off (this doesn't work so well for chunky or stiff necklaces).


Ta-da! Super easy and, more importantly, mega cheap. There are heaps of cool things you could do with these, like painting over the wrapped string or hanging one from another, go crazy.

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

How do you currently store your necklaces? Has this post been helpful to you?  

Review: Flower Chain Necklace


I paid a bit more for this necklace (Product Page) than I'm normally happy to spend on AliExpress. But I fell fully in love with it, so I had to have it. That said, it was only $7.70 USD, which is still really cheap.


It's a stunning necklace, but it's actually a total nuisance. Firstly, it's heavy. Secondly, the flowers don't sit right and need constant readjusting to get the little red ones to sit in front of the big yellow ones neatly. Thirdly, it's too bright for my skintone- I think this would look stunning on peeps with darker skin than me, but it overwhelmed my complexion.

I took plyers to it and removed the flowers, leaving only the blue chain behind. I totally adore it now, and I have some cool flower charms I can use for something else! Huzzah!


Note: the eyelets are still on in these photos because I removed them all later. They needed to be pried quite far apart to come off.


Note 2: That's my adorable kook of a cat, Izzy. She looks grumpy, but if I wasn't holding her, she'd be on the ground meowing at me to pick her up for a cuddle. Cats are weird.

Speaking of cute weird things, here's Dusty modelling the necklace before I improved it:




Two points to Gryffindor if you spotted that my pets are colour-coordinated!

 Ratings
Product Quality: 4/5 (The paint or whatever it is comes off when scraped, which is something I'll have to watch out for)
Accuracy of Description: 4/5 (The colours are brighter IRL and it looks just a bit difference overall on the product page)
Similarity to Original: N/A

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Review x Fool's Gold: Mise-En-Dior Earring Dupes

[If you're new here, Fool's Gold is a regular segment in which we examine dupes. Because it mightn't be real gold, but in this case, it's just as good!]


These Dior earrings have been around for a few months and have been worn by such people as Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Cara Delevigne, Emma Watson and Charlize Theron. They're pretty hot right now, suffice to say.

From the Mise-En-Dior earring product page

I think they're pretty great, so I headed straight to AliExpress the first time they appeared on J-Law and found that there are loads of them to be found for very cheap prices. You can find them in every colour imaginable and in a few different sizes to boot.

I had no idea which to get, so I bought three pairs, from this page. I got 16mm Champagne, 16mm Pink and 18mm Pearl, all of which I thought would be nice and understated varieties. I might buy a more bold pair, because, spoiler alert, I totally love these!

Left-to-Right: 18mm Pearl, 16mm Champagne, 16mm Pink

These are the parts


Looking at photos of the Dior originals, they actually look much heavier than mine. In the above photo of Jennifer Lawrence, you can see that her earlobe is slightly bent to accomodate the extra weight of the back section. This doesn't happen with the dupe versions, as they're very light. I think the Dior ones would actually be very uncomfortable!

18mm Pearl
16mm Pink

As for prices, Mise-En-Dior retail at about $450 (USD). The dupes can be found for under $2 a pair. Sure, you're never going to convince anyone that they're the real thing, but that's not really the point. If you like the style, you can get it for dirt cheap!

I'd totally suggest getting a couple of pairs. You can play mix-and-match with the balls, swapping around the front sections. Hour and hours of fun.


Ratings
Product Quality: 5/5
Accuracy of Description: 5/5
Similarity to Original: 4/5

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Review: Silver 'Jacket' Earrings

This year I have been totally enamoured with a type of earring called the 'jacket' earring. Jacket earrings are comprised of a stud earring with an extra attachment that sits between the ear lobe and the butterfly or stud component. They are a brilliant way of adding a little bit of edge and interest to an outfit, without being too overstated.


My favourite pair are these silver diamante ones, which I bought off eBay a few months ago. They are super cheap, at under $4 (USD+Shipping) for two!

From Product Page
They have a stud with a long wire that is slightly crooked, so they sit better. There are two holes on the attachment, for different sized earlobes. It's great design and I haven't had problems with it yet. Aside from the classic earring problem of getting caught on clothes and coming off.




The photos on the Product Page, as seen above, suggest that the earrings are decorated with little stars, but they are actually more like flowers. I don't mind this, as it's a minor difference, but it's still a thing to note. I haven't found a version of this product for sale that has pictures of these flower ones. Are all the advertised star ones these flower ones? Who knows...


Overall, I'm really happy with these. For their price, I've gotten a lot of use out of them and I'm sure I will continue to. They're only slightly starting to go that bronze colour cheap silver jewellery inevitably goes, and I think I'll just buy another couple if they break or go too brown.

If you are considering buying earrings like these off eBay or Aliexpress, double-check how many the page is selling. For a pair of these, I ordered 2 and received a pair, but for another, similar, item I ordered 2 and received 2 pairs.

Ratings
Product Quality: 4/5
Accuracy of Description: 3/5
Similarity to Original: N/A (I think!)

I have another two pairs of jacket earrings, so keep an eye out for reviews of them, coming up in the next couple of months. If you're a fan of a jacket earring, let us know in the comments below and/or come squeal in excitement with me on Twitter!

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Fool's Gold: Return of the Pizza Necklace

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a Fool's Gold comparing a very expensive Pizza Necklace to a cheaper alternative. In that post, the necklaces were quite different, though similar in pizza-ness.

Browsing an Etsy store, I stumbled across the exact same necklace as the Aliexpress one, but for twice the price and far fewer the quantity!



Here's the one sold via ShopSpaceTrash:


Not only is it supremely cheeky that they sell 5 for around $40 (USD, inc shipping costs), they also sell ONE necklace for around $15ea! It's likely that they bought these necklaces from a wholesale site like Aliexpress, so the sheer amount of profit they make per purchase is ridiculous.

Here's the one sold via Aliexpress:


See, it's exactly the same!

Over Aliexpress, 20 pieces will cost you $22 (USD, inc shipping).
Over ShopSpaceTrash, 20 pieces will cost you $156.

That's a difference of $134! And on ShopSpaceTrash, you can't even buy 20 so easily, as they have a maximum order of 3 sets of 5. ShopSpaceTrash is a very popular store, and just the 5 piece Pizza Necklace set has over 100 favourites on Etsy. But they are really having a laugh with the price tag.

I love Etsy, but a lot of the stuff for sale can be found for much cheaper elsewhere. They buy in bulk, take nicer photos and sell amongst their handmade guff. All is fair in love, war and e-stores, and it's not illegal, just good marketing. However, we're on the consumer's side, so screw it, it makes us angry.

ShopSpaceTrash, consider yourself absolootely called out.

Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield

Pearl of Wisdom x Fool's Gold: A Pair of Fake Chanel Earrings

Guys, I totes read an academic paper and I think you'll be interested in what it's about.

"Omg, what is this, what sane person actually reads academic papers?!" We're called students.

I get forced into reading a lot of marketing papers for my course, and they are very tedious most of the time, but sometimes they are absolute gold. I swear 90% of a marketing degree is consumer tips, backed up by great research.

This study* is an example of some knowledge that is actually very useful to have up your sleeve. It basically provides solid evidence that people will treat you better if you're wearing a luxury brand logo.
"A person who displays a luxury-brand label, not an ordinary label, is indeed perceived as wealthier and receives higher status ratings than a person who does not display a label, as predicted by notions of conspicuous consumption." *
Conspicuous consumption means that a good or service is used by you in front of an 'audience'. Like, lots of people are going to see you driving your car, but a lot less people will see you using your shampoo. We tend to focus more on the things we consume in public, because of associations and branding and all that stuff.

Note the blu tack in the reflection...
I'm a huge fan of psychology and I love employing little Life Tricks. For example, the more you show your palms, the most trustworthy you're perceived as being (fun fact). But I don't have any luxury brand items, unless you count a pretty sweet colour screen Casio calculator or a Samsung Galaxy from three generations ago. Oh, I have prescription Ray Ban glasses, but I think they're pretty embarrassing these days. Thanks, hipsters.

Enter Aliexpress.

Designer knock offs are super common, I don't need to tell you that. I've seen more fake Louis Vuitton wallets than wallets of any other sort. It's very frowned upon to buy fake, because that's kinda a sign that you're trying too hard and being fake yourself. However, we don't really feel the same way about dupes from less expensive brands or dupes that don't have a logo on them. I have a fake Lazy Oaf shirt and a lot of the stuff I own is 'inspired' by designer brands via trickle-down trends or plain ol' copying.

I guess the difference is aesthetics vs brand equity (value). I have a pair or three of fake Mise En Dior earrings, that I bought before J-Law and Rihanna started wearing the real things and alerting me to Dior's originals. I bought them for sheer aesthetic reasons. Most of Dior's earrings are, to be honest, kinda awful, but seem pretty because they have the brand name attached to them. Buying a fake pair of this variety would be for brand equity reasons and that's a little shady.


HOWEVER, I'm all for shady, in small doses! I've already ordered myself a pair of fake Chanel earrings (hopefully more convincing than my DIY ones, pictured above), and I intend to use them for practical reasons. The study found that wearing luxury brands helps in job interviews and collected donations, and other cases. It's a very small investment for some pretty great benefits.
"Seven laboratory and field experiments supported the prediction that people treat a person who displays a luxury brand more favourably than a person who does not or, more accurately, than the same person when he or she wears identical clothing without a brand label." *
Sure, the paper does make it clear that the reason luxury brands make people seem higher status is because they seem like they have more wealth, which is totally offset by having a fake pair of earrings. But who is really going to ask "Are those real?" And if some punk does ask you that, I give you permission to lie.

I'm recommending that everyone should have a convincing, logo emblazoned, piece of fake designer wear, to pull out when you feel like you might need a bit of a boost. Earrings are really great, because they're usually just logos and they're small enough to not be noticeably fake. Also, I think a pair of Chanel, etc, earrings is something a lot of girls would have, even if the rest of their outfit was from Glassons or TopShop. It's something a wealthy grandmother would pass down, or a special birthday present from some very nice parents.

Below, you shall find a wonderful collection of the best fake earrings I found. Bar the ones I made, of course. I went for ones that were very simple and looked expensive, because they're more convincing. If you want to search for more over on Aliexpress or eBay, searching with the brand name won't get you far. Use "brand earrings" or "logo earrings", and scroll through some pages.






*Nelissen, Rob and Marijn HC Meijers (2011), "Social Benefits of Luxury Brands as Costly Signals of Wealth and Status," Evolution and Human Behavior, 32 (5), 343-55.
Further Quotes from Nelissen & Marijn, 2010:

"Participants in the brand-label condition found the applicant more suitable for the job... and also suggested he should earn more than the applicant in the no-label condition."

"Participants in the brand-label condition complied with the request on 52.2% of the occasions, compared to 13.6% in the no-label condition."

"Average donations were higher in the brand-label condition than in the no-label condition."

"Transfers in the luxury-label condition exceeded those in the ordinary-label condition."


Fun .gif Google made for me...
Contributor: Kate, @Springerfield
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