Wall-mounted Laser Cut Jewelry Organizer That's Also Wall Art

I like to make jewelry for fun but I don't wear it because I have sensitivity issues. I also like to buy other people's unique jewelry creations just because they're cool or pretty. And, I have the ones my daughter made for me when she was young, plus gifted pieces. So, now I have a lot of jewelry that's scattered throughout my home. Many necklaces are literally balled up in a bag or in a box where I can't see them and a few are hanging off a velvet display I bought that collects all the lint and dust in the house. Many pairs of earrings are also just sitting around in boxes and bags. I have a few rings (I don't buy or make as many of these). And I also have what I call future jewelry which is just focal pieces I've made or bought that I don't necessarily have plans for yet, but will likely make something with.

I would like to display all these pieces (and have room for the future pieces) but I don't have any desk space for a jewelry stand. I have plenty of wall space, so I started wondering if there was a way I could design something wall mounted that is a work of art in and of itself but also displays my jewelry that doesn't look like just a hook on the wall. The necklaces especially need to be spread out in a way that you can see them best.

After much brainstorming and modeling, I think I have made the perfect (for me) display.

Materials

1. 3mm plywood
2. Craft glue or wood glue
3. Paint and/or stain

Tools

1. Design program like Illustrator
2. Laser cutter
3. Fine-grit sandpaper (I always use 220 because I have a lot of it)
4. Hammer and nails to hang it up

This was a hard one. The problem is I have way more necklaces and earrings than other types of jewelry (and most of my future jewelry will likely be necklaces too because I just love them). I have very few rings and bracelets (maybe I'll make more with my future jewelry pieces). And I have a couple of keychains and a sun catcher I made.

I went to the internet to see if it would spark ideas, but mostly it was just hooks to hang things from that didn't really show off the jewelry the way I wanted to. And they were very pedestrian looking.

What I need is something that can spread out the top of a necklace (or bracelet, I suppose) so you can see the sides and focal piece better and something that has nubs to put rings (and the keychains and sun catcher) on and something with holes that I can hook earrings through (I don't have any stud earrings so I don't need to worry about those). I have seen the display stands that are shaped like trees and luckily my brain was in overdrive and immediately thought of a monstera leaf which has many lobes and holes. I don't know how it made that connection but I'm glad it did.

Next, I needed to count the jewelry pieces I already have to make sure I make this thing big enough for those as well as the future pieces. The photo above is only a sampling of my disparate collection.

1. Necklaces: 16 (some are just pendants on a chain)
2. Earrings: 11 pairs plus an ear cuff
3. Bracelets: 4
4. Rings: 4
5. Keychains: 3
6. Sun catchers: 2 (I don't have much light getting into the house since it's surrounded by trees, so that's why they aren't hanging in the windows)

The only things that need holes are the earrings, so as long as I have enough leaf lobes to place necklaces, bracelets, rings and keychains on, I should be good.

First we need to identify all the goals:

1. The most obvious is to hang all the jewelry on it and have room for more later.
2. It needs to come out away from the wall so the jewelry isn't scraping the wall behind.
3. It needs to be balanced.
4. It needs to be pretty and a work of art even if there was no jewelry hanging on it but also not be so bold that it overpowers the jewelry on display.

So, the first thing I thought when considering moving it away from the wall and also balancing it was a "false wall" behind it that I could maybe do a lattice pattern on. I could make that a large square or rectangle to help keep the whole thing balanced and make it easier to hang with a hook in the back on both sides. Then I could create stacks of circles beneath the leaves to hold them away from the wall.

And to be pretty but not overpowering, I can do this with color. The wall I'm hanging this piece on is a sort of bland cream color and generally I put dark colored frames on it so the art within the frames stands out even if it is light in color. So, I can stain the false wall a dark color, then make the leaves a pale green. Most of my jewelry is blue, pink or purple on a silver or copper metal. The pale green wouldn't compete. I have one bracelet that is green stones so maybe I can hang that in such a way that most of it is against the dark lattice behind.

To be practical, I know that all the lobes I create on a large monstera leaf won't be useful because many will be facing down or at weird angles that won't be able to hold things up (gravity is always causing problems). But there are mini monstera plants that climb and those leaves are small with only about 5 lobes each. The internet was quite helpful in seeing how I might design, because a lot of people provide a lattice wall or some other wood element behind the plant to help it climb. I can have many "branches" with a variety of leaf sizes for both beauty and practicality.

Also, I knew this, but the more I thought about it the more it bothered me. The actual holes on a monstera leaf are much larger than what I would need for earrings and while I don't have to be completely accurate, being completely inaccurate isn't something I could handle mentally. :) So, I need something else for all of the earrings that I can tie into the piece. One of the things I add to my art often when it needs that something extra is bubbles or polka dots. They add fun to the art. Different sized bubbles all over the lattice would help the earrings stand out as a pair and just be a fun addition to the art as a whole.

The mood board I created (shown above) will help me with my next step of designing the art.

I've collected plenty of monstera leaf reference images in the past to create this Crazy Plant Pal and Crazy Plant Lady art. But that was a drawing and now I have to create something that I can laser cut to be strong enough to hold some of the heavier necklaces I have.

Also, I can't just draw one leaf and reposition it. This is going to be an art piece so variety (just like in the real plant) is necessary.

And throughout the years I've learned that going outside the box (yeah, ugh, I know) creates a more interesting composition.

So the first thing I need to do is draw the box (or rectangle in this case). I'm not entirely sure how big this piece will need to be. It all depends on how many leaves I need to draw to get the right number of lobes that are upright enough to hold the jewelry I have and yet to have. My future jewelry spots might depend on how big the piece needs to be for my present jewelry. If it starts to be too big, I will turn it into a triptych.

It's important to note that the biggest size I can cut on my laser cutter is 16" x 11.5" (I can cut deeper but the wood I have is 18" x 12"). I've tried cutting wider than 16" but there were issues, so I try to remain at 16" or less. If I need the art to be wider or taller, I usually cut everything in pieces and puzzle them together.

So, I created a rectangle 11.5" wide by 16" deep. I wanted a half-inch border so I drew another rectangle to be 10.5" by 15" and centered those to create my frame.

Then I pulled a bunch of reference images of monstera leaves (large and small) onto the artboard and started tracing them. I wanted a good variety so I drew a lot of them. I only drew the leaves because I planned to draw the vines separately on the rectangle and place the leaves where I needed them inside the actual art.

Some notes:

1. I realized as I was tracing the images that the lobes might be too big to place rings over. The width of the inner part of my rings and the jump rings on my sun catchers is a half inch. The width inside the cuff of my ear cuff is 5/16". But on the images of the vining monsteras, I noticed these little stems sticking out where I assume a branch is trying to develop. So I planned to add several of those to help.
2. Another thing I thought of during this process is that I would need to go back and make sure that the lobes are spaced far enough apart for me to drape things over them or even put my fingers between them if needed. Some of my necklaces and all of my bracelets have lots of beads so I'm not just trying to provide space for a thin chain for most of these.
3. On a real monstera plant, the bigger the leaves, the more downward they turn probably because they are heavier. I could still use downward facing leaves since they still have lobes at the top I can drape a necklace or bracelet over. But I may take artistic license here and go against nature in order to make sure they can be useful for my purposes.
4. After I drew eight monstera leaves they all started to look the same even though I was tracing different plants. So I decided to stop there and just make minor adjustments with the ones I had to create the variety I need.
5. I counted how many necklaces I might be able to hang (just the necklaces) from those eight leaves and decided it might be 8-10. That's when I decided this definitely needs to be a triptych. For now I'm only going to cut one to test the design and the look.

After drawing the leaves, I tried out some bubble designs. I know from experience that hanging earrings on a stiff, flat surface is kind of difficult so I tried a bubble with a crescent shape inside under the holes where I'd put the earrings, one with a large circular cutout under them, and one with just two loops inside the circular cutout, and one with a series of holes getting bigger around the edge and a crescent under those. I didn't like some of them immediately because I was seeing sad faces when I looked at them. So I ran a test cut (shown in the fourth image above) of the one with the increasing holes around the edge and hooked some of my earrings into it. I found that I could hook them into the holes more easily when I put them in upside down and then turned them around. That meant I didn't even need the crescent shape. But I did need to space out the holes more because a couple of my earrings were overlapping each other and you couldn't really see them well. So I adjusted it and decided that's the bubble I'd use throughout the art.

Next I went through some of the background designs I've drawn before to find a nice lattice or geometric design to go behind the leaves. I wanted something that won't distract but is also pretty. In my mood board I used a simple diamond pattern, but I drew something recently that looked more like the garden trellis you might find outside for climbing plants. I thought that might be more relevant to this design. Also, the design has straight lines going vertically throughout which would provide more support for the leaves and bubbles.

After that, I just started placing monstera leaves and bubbles around on top of the trellis pattern until I got a design I liked. I sometimes just added circles the same color as the bubbles that wouldn't host earrings but added to the composition. I tried to keep the monstera leaves apart enough so that the necklaces hanging from them wouldn't drape over lower pieces. I suppose I could also just plan to hang the longer ones on the lower leaves.

After I got the leaves and bubbles where I wanted them, I drew some vines and added the branch nubs in various places to hold the rings and other smaller things. When I was happy, I drew another frame and joined the vines with it using the Unite option in the Pathfinder tool. I wanted the vines to be above the trellis and the leaves above the vines. I created another frame above the vines so that I could stain it dark like the trellis and create more depth.

Then I decided the easiest way to raise the leaves and bubbles to keep the jewelry from hitting the wall or trellis would be to attach circles to the vine layer under where the leaves and bubbles went. Then I'd create three each of the same size circles and glue them all together in a stack to create that depth. This would also help with placement of the leaves and bubbles later.

To hang the panels I created a laser-cut hook attached to the top back on both sides to hang on a nail. I created a set of feet for the bottom of the panels so they hang straight.

I included the SVG files for one panel below. They are made for a wood depth of 2.8mm. The blue lines are score lines. Cut green, then red, then black. Because there are circles that are part of the bubble group and circles that are used to raise the leaves and bubbles, I grouped the bubbles together and added a slightly recessed score line inside of the ones that don't have earring holes.

In hindsight, I should have made the riser circles some other shape and even different shapes among the similarly sized ones. Maybe next time.

The first things I cut were the smaller pieces so that I could do some prep work on them while the background pieces cut. I separated the bubbles from the riser circles and started going to work on gluing together the stacks of circles that would go under the leaves the bubbles.

It was tedious work, but I located three each of ones that matched in size, spread glue between them and used binder clips to hold them together (this didn't work for the smaller ones, so I just held them tightly for about a minute). Putting binder clips on tends to make things shift, so be sure you stack them all neat again before you move on to the next. Though having them line up exactly isn't as necessary since they are under the main elements.

Then I glued the hanger piece with the nail hook on it to the hanger piece that will insert into the back of the trellis layer (third image above).

Next, I started sanding the edges of the leaves and bubbles to make them more rounded and smooth. The circles that are meant to be decorative-only bubbles, I turned over so the score line was on the back. I only put that there to differentiate between them and the riser circles.

As I was working, I would constantly go back and check the laser to see if it was ready for another round of cutting.

I didn't sand the edges of the vine layer or the trellis layer because I didn't want them to be rounded. I lightly sanded the surface and used a dry cloth to clean it.

I like the look of wood grain so when I paint wood with regular acrylic or interior house paint, I use a damp rag and I use pouring medium to thin the paint so that it goes on semi-transparent like regular wood stain does.

For the green shades, I started with the bubbles and mixed a teal with a lime with some white to get the shade I wanted. This would be the lightest color of the three things I'm painting. Next I moved on to the leaves, adding a little more teal and much more of the lime. Then, when the vine layer was done cutting, I mixed the lime and teal, using more teal this time and no white.

I used a dark wood stain for the frame layer that sits just above the vine layer and the trellis layer in back. I let it dry for a few hours, then wiped those layers down to make sure there was no residue.

First, make sure everything is dry and free of any dust and debris.

Start with gluing the vine layer on top of the trellis layer (second photo above), matching up the outside edges. Make sure not to put glue inside the holes at the corners of the trellis layer (where the hooks in back will go).

Next glue the frame on top of the vine layer, matching the circles along the inside edges.

Then glue the circle stacks on top of the vine layer, matching the sizes as best as you can (slightly off won't matter since they'll be hidden).

Next, using the image of the final design from Step 3 as a guide (I included a high-contrast PDF below to help), put the bubbles and leaves on top of the circle stacks. I started with the smallest bubbles that went around the frame. Then I placed the two biggest leaves on the bottom. I tried to line them up the way they were in the image, using the trellis lines and vine position as a guide. And I sort of worked my way up going from leaf to bubble to leaf to try to make sure each has enough space so that no leaf or bubble would be too close to another one. It also helped to place some bubbles down before gluing them so I could see how close I could get with a leaf.

The binder clips around the edges helped with balancing the bigger leaves while the glue was wet so they would stay up and dry flat.

NOTE: It was when I was placing the last four leaves on top that I realized the branch nubs I created on the vine layer won't be helpful at all for putting anything on because that layer isn't raised at all. Darn! Next time! I also noticed that I painted the wrong side of one of my bubbles so the little holes go the opposite as all the rest of the bubbles.

After all of that was dry, I glued the hangers on the top back of the trellis layer and the lower supports at the bottom (fifth photo above).

I let everything dry for about 2 hours before even attempting to hang it on the wall. I would suggest waiting overnight, but I was impatient.

To make it easier to know where to put nails in the wall, I created a nail guide (attached below) that I printed out, poked holes through the circles at the ends, and marked my wall (using a level to make sure the thing hangs properly).

Then I put nails in the wall, lined up the hooks on top, and slid the hangers over them.

Then I started putting a couple pairs of earrings on and a necklace to see how well it worked. After I was satisfied it wasn't going to fall off the wall, I loaded on some more jewelry. I didn't put as much as I had planned because I really liked seeing more of the leaves.

It was a little more difficult putting the earrings on than with my test when the bubbles are actually mounted to the piece. But I think a little more distance between them and the back would help.

So, I guess my next task will be making more. Maybe instead of a triptych, I will play around with different designs and put them throughout the house. I can try different color schemes and different themes! It'll be fun!

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