Today, among other errands, I shopped for the curtain rings with clips attached, in order to hang my scarves and fabric in the dining room that I told you about yesterday. It turns out that retailers have lost their darn minds when it comes to pricing that particular hardware!! They’re sold in packs of seven rings for $11.99 per pack. I needed 7 or 8 packs, I guessed. There was absolutely no way I was willing to part with nearly a hundred dollars for rings with flimsy little clips attached. Seriously, who priced those things?! Crazy, I say. So, I still needed the rings. What to do? What to do? DIY, of course! I bought a bag of miniature wooden clothespins from the craft department at WalMart and bundles of costume jewelry from the $1 jewelry store on Chenal Parkway, here in Little Rock. I made a total of 50 rings with clips for $6.97 + a little spray paint, heavy duty upholstery thread, and a few unused napkin rings and bracelets that I had sitting around. ($1.97 for the miniature clothespins and $5 for four pair of earrings and a pack of bangle bracelets at $1/each = $6.97) My rings with clips are an assortment of sizes, all in silver and gold tones! I LOVE the look much, much more than if I had spent the $100 for them to all be standard rings.
1. Buy miniature clothespins and junk jewelry. 2. Snip hardware, just leaving the giant hoops of the earrings. (I used earrings that gave me a total of 8 usable hoops per pair of earrings for $1 per pair.) 3. Clip clothespins onto cardboard and spray paint them black. 4. Use heavy thread or wire to tie clips onto the ring (the thread fit through the spring in the clothespins, so drilling wasn’t necessary! Yea!) 5. Slide them onto the curtain rod and use the clips to pinch the scarves and fabric! Enjoy! I’m pretty pleased with myself about this little curtain project of mine! Yards and yards of fabric, lots and lots of my silk scarves, and a little DIY = my OWN curtain wall. Nobody will walk in and say, “Oh, so and so bought those same curtains,” or any such thing. That’s enough to keep me happy. I am just truly repelled by ever having a room that looks like it stepped right out of a big box store. My scarves are all still usable if I change to something else next year, and all of the scarves have some sort of memory attached to them, since they were ALL accumulated and worn throughout the years. For example, the scarf that has “Paris” all over it, was purchased by my grandmother in Paris as a gift for me when she travelled a few years ago. Are my curtains Hippie curtains? Gypsy style? I don’t know or care. I just really, really like them, so they’re fine by me!! I’m still playing around with the placement/draping of the scarves and fabric; I’ll have it finalized before I “reveal” this room in its entirety in a separate post! Page Page 79 79