DIY Scarf {or Tie} Hanger for Under $4

In college, one of my roommates owned about 30 scarves.  No lie.  There may even be some of you out there that own more.  I have not yet reached that level of greatness, but maybe someday….Anyways, this roommate of mine had this great scarf hanger ($8) from Ikea.  I loved it and have always wanted one, but have also always wondered if I could make it myself.  I found a few pictures on Pinterest, but no tutorials.  And what do you do when you can’t find any tutorials?  You make it up.

I knew the materials I needed, so that was no problem.  Bonus: I got the materials for about $3 from Walmart.

Materials

• Hanger
• Plastic shower curtain rings: $0.94 (2 packs-I used 15 rings for the scarf holder and 9 rings for the tie holder)
• Yarn: $1.77
• Hot glue gun and hot glue

Making the Hanger

First, lay out all of your rings in the arrangement you like.  I did sort of a pyramid style (6, 5, 4), but you could do the same number in each row, too.

I wanted mine to look a little like the Ikea one, so I decided to wrap it in yarn.  This was very time-consuming, so crafter beware.  (If you want, you can just leave them white.  I’ll show you an example at the end of this post.)  I wrapped the rings in two sections.  First, I wrapped the divot part of the top.  Start it off by hot gluing one of the ends and wrapping over the section you just hot glued.  I had to double or triple wrap to get the yarn to flow smoothly from the divot to the main part of the ring.

Continue wrapping the yarn all the way around until you get to the end.  Glue the end down on the bottom or back to hide the hot glue until you get this…….:

…..or this:

Repeat…and repeat…and repeat until all of your pieces are done.  (Are your fingers sore yet?)

Next, I wanted my hanger to look uniform with the rings, so I wrapped the bottom of the hanger using the same technique as the rings.

Hot glue the first row of rings in the arrangement that you decided on to the bottom of the hanger.

Then glue the next row of rings.  Here’s how I glued the shower curtain rings:

For the end rings, you won’t need two of the sections of glue (whichever side is sticking out).

To ensure that the rings didn’t break off, I wrapped additional yarn around the points where they connected to other pieces.  These are the same points that I glued.  Again, glue the first end down, wrap the piece of yarn around tightly, then glue the remaining end to the back.

Your final product will look something like this:

You can also do a simpler modified version.  Instead of wrapping the shower curtain rings, just glue them on as is and add some yarn to make it sturdier.

I made this one for Kevin for his ties.

This project is great because it has so many options.  Want a lot of spaces for your scarves or ties?  Glue more rings on the hanger.  Don’t feel like investing the time to wrap the rings?  Don’t do it.  Feel like adding a special touch to your hanger?  Take the time to wrap the rings.  You could do different colors, wrap the whole hanger, anything goes really.

What about you–what design do you like best?