Just a Bird in a Guilded Cage - Jewelry Display

What can you do with a bird cage?

The obvious answer is keep your bird in it.  Don't have a bird?  Don't want a bird? Here's an idea:

A bird cage is a great way to display your jewelry.  My jewelry was in tiny zip lock bags and stashed in a large jewelry box with multiple drawers.  Everyday I would rifle through the various bags trying to find the pieces I wanted to wear. I couldn't remember what was in each drawer and if I pulled them out far enough to see inside the drawer would fall out.  Frustrating.

Helping a friend unpack, I got the job of putting away her jewelry which she displayed on a metal flower-shaped wall decoration.  Very cute and you could see all of the beautiful bracelets, necklaces, etc.  So now I was on a mission to find something similar for my house.  Off I went to Home Goods, one of my favorite field trips.  Of course, they had nothing similar so with my problem-solving hat on,  I went up and down every isle (somebody has to do it) trying to conjure up the perfect jewelry display item,  Several items made it into the basket and the same items went back on the shelf on the next trip around.

Then I saw a gorgeous standing bird cage and my creative juices started flowing.  How could I use it?  I loved that it stood on it's own, nothing to hang and it would take the space of the old jewelry box.  It was more money than I wanted to spend but I could see it looking beautiful in the bedroom and I was really tired of looking so it came home with me. 

The necklaces and earrings that closed I hung on the horizontal wires that ran around the outside.

For the bracelets, I cut two 1/2 wood dowels so that they were long enough to span the cage and glued some scrap black velvet on them. Voila - bracelet perches.  If you used a smaller diameter dowel you could have ring perches.

 View looking down from the top:

The bottom of the cage was wired and I was afraid things would fall through so I covered a circle of cardboard (actually 2 half circles to fit the diameter of the cage) in the same black velvet and put it in the bottom of the cage. Then I added a circular glass relish plate with dividers, the kind you put pickles and olives on.  This was the perfect place to put post earrings, pins, etc.

 View looking in through the cage bars:

Here's the finished product.  It looks great and I can see all the pretty jewelry, enjoying it every day even if I am not wearing it.

Although I purchased this metal decorative cage, with patience you could probably find one at a garage sale or thrift store or just turn out your bird and claim its cage!  Have fun.