I wanted a way to carry and protect some of my dangly earrings when away from home, and because I'm a bit obsessive, I wanted to keep them all organised and pretty :D The project takes a box and makes an inner panel for it, which will hold your earrings. I'm afraid the design only accommodates earrings for pierced ears, and although it can take stud-style earrings, it works better with earrings that don't have backs on them.

My container holds up to 20 pairs of dangly earrings, but you can vary the size as you like - I'd advise you start fairly small.

Disclaimer:
This is my first instructable, so I reserve the right for it to be a bit poopy, and if you do decide to shoot me for it being poopy, I reserve the right to scream and wail like a big baby. However, if there are any problems then I'd prefer it if you told me, and I'll try to fix them :)

Step 1: Materials and Tools

Materials:
- a small cardboard box, with a lid
- medium-to-light weight card

Tools:
- ruler
- pencil
- pin
- scissors
- eraser/rubber/whatever you call it.

The card will need to be heavy enough to support your earrings, but light enough that you can poke holes in it with the pin. I used a 13cm square notecard box and decided in an unusual bout of girliness to use pink cardboard for the inner panel.

Step 2: Measure!

Now you need to measure the inside of the base of your box, and work out what height/width you want the inner cardboard panel to be, and how far down in the box it will sit. Do all the marking on the back of your card, so it won't show later.

Height and width: You want the panel to fit snugly, so don't round down. I chose my panel to be 13cm square.

Depth: I chose a depth of 1cm, so the panel sits 1cm above the base of the box. You need to leave enough space for your earrings to lie between the panel and the lid.

The inner panel is as illustrated - measure out rectangle heigh by width, then measure two borders around it, each the size of the depth. It's worth being quite careful at this stage, so you get a good fit. Draw all the lines in pencil, and don't erase them yet.

Step 3: Cut/crease the Inner Panel

Cut around the very outside of the shape you've just drawn. Crease all the lines.

Cut the corners along the red lines as illustrated to leave three little flaps at each corner.

Now's a good time to check that the panel fits snugly in your box - step 6 tells you how to fold the edges up, and you can easily unfold them again.

Step 4: Measure, Again...

Now measure where you want your holes to go and mark them with a pencil. Do this on the front of your card and erase the marks after step 3.

I did 4 rows of holes, with the rows about 2.7cm apart and 1.2cm between holes on each row. Do what makes sense for the earrings you wear, but:
- do holes in pairs (assuming you're storing pairs of earrings)
- don't go too near the edge
- dangly earrings dangle, so putting holes at the bottom won't be much use
- don't do holes too close together or they'll be weaker
- remember that you don't /have/ to put earrings in every hole. If you're storing a pair of really long earrings, then you needn't put earrings in the holes below them.

If you like you can just pop holes in in randomly distributed pairs, but I think rows are neater and are more versatile.

(I'm writing after making the project, so in the picture you can see the backs of earrings, and spaces which longer earrings were dangling over. It's also been folded already... oops...)

Step 5: Poke Holes!

Use the pin to puncture holes in the card. The side the pin enters from will be neater, so poke from the front of the card. Once you're done you can erase any pencil marks.

Yeah, you don't need a picture to illustrate this part. Tough luck ;)

Step 6: You're Nearly There!

Fold the panel as shown, then place it in the bottom of the box. If it fits snugly then it shouldn't unfold, so you don't need to glue/tape it.

Fill it with earrings and you're done :)