By Carol Duvall
Trish Ekholt of St. Petersburg, Fla., sent in a couple of nifty mystery items and a letter explaining what, what for, why and how. The items were hangers...wire coat hangers. And they ARE hangers...hangers for scrunchies! The transformation was quite simple and certainly clever. Trish wrote that she has long hair and so she has quite a collection of scrunchies to keep it in place. But she was short of places to keep the scrunchies. She has a small bathroom and no counter space. She ended up with scrunchies on the door knobs, on the closet shelf, in a basket...but no matter what, they multiplied when she wasn’t looking and there were always more scrunchies than there were places to put them. And then she came up with her coat hanger idea: 1. With a wire cutter, cut the coat hanger several inches away from the hanger (figure A). 2. With your hands or pliers, straighten out the entire length of the hanger. It is easier to get a straight hanger without little blips in it if you do this just a bit at a time. It takes longer but gives you a neater result. 3. If you wish to make a small hanger, now is the time to cut out a length of the wire before you start to reshape it. If you will be making a circle (the easiest) or a star (figure B) or a heart, reshape using the same method you used to un-shape it...in other words, just a little at a time. 4. At the end nearest the hook, shape a small circle (figure C). At the end of the wire you have been bending, shape a small U-shaped hook (figure D) and connect the two (figure E). 5. Essentially you are done; however, you will have raw ends on the cut wire. It’s not so terrible to leave them as they are, but to give a more finished look to the item, you might do as Trish did and that is to dip the ends into a container of liquid rubber (figure F). Several different companies make it in red, white, blue and clear. It is available hardware stores and home improvement stores. We applied two coats, but be prepared to wait 24 hours between coats!
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