Shopkins Display Tutorial

You've been there, right? 

You're in a store that has Shopkins in stock, but only when you don't want to spend the money. So you try so desperately to avoid the toy section, but your little one has laser vision and heads straight to them before you can redirect. Right? 

I've been stuck trying to dig $2.88 + tax in coins out of my purse to avoid using my debit card. On more occasions then I care to admit. Needless to say, my seven year old is obsessed. But where do you put them? We tried at least a handful of storage options and none of them were perfect.

So, enough is enough. Mom's making some herself!

These are not perfect. I don't have that kind of patience. Thankfully my OCD was not bothered by small splinters of wood coming off. Once you paint them, imperfections are pretty much not noticeable. If perfect DIY is for you, this post is not ;)

I picked these little shelving pieces up at Michaels. They were in the Christmas section so not readily available in this design probably, but the last time I was there they had some in different shapes with the ready-to-use wood pieces. These were less than $5 each with a coupon. 

This flimsy balsa wood is what I used to make the extra "shelves". This width was good because, cut in three equal pieces, I will have an extra piece for when we need another shelf. Which I'm sure won't be long! Season 4 is out, you know! -flips hair-

Using my ruler, I measured the depth of the existing shelves and drew that on the balsa piece with a pen. It will indent the wood a little bit so don't be afraid to push down. 

Take an Exacto knife and cut all the way through as you go down. It goes through a lot more smoothly than it looks. Be careful not to cut anything important underneath! I left my ruler there as a guide and it made it go through much faster.

I took a pen and made little marks where I needed to cut for each section. I tried to keep everything as evenly spaced as possible. I used scissors to cut through the balsa since it wasnt going with the grain anymore, and it did splinter a little. I just put which ever end looked less appealing and put it against the back.

Test all your pieces first. If it isn't flush with the existing shelves, trim it up. Using the ruler makes it a lot easier to keep it even.

Glue them in! I used a regular paintable/stainable wood glue. Nothing fancy. And you don't need much at all. I used a very small paint brush and just brushed a tiny bit on the sides that will touch. Held them down for ten to twenty seconds and let the whole thing dry for probably six hours or so. Nothing budged.

Before and after.

It took two coats (I used a foam brush) of acrylic paint to match her room.

Easy peasy!

I used my Silhouette program to create the graphic for the heading, and printed it on sticker paper to stick to the piece of wood we bought. It has the jagged edges which I happened to notice are the same design as the top and bottom of the Shopkins list you get in every blind bag.

(Point for mom!)

But you can hand paint it, print something on paper and mod podge it, there are really many ways to do it.

They can add all their little friends, organized in any way their little heart desires! 

If you get the desire to create your own, please share! I'd love to see how yours turned out.

Dear Chevron...

It's done! 

I wish I could say that I loved doing it. I wish I could say it was easy. But, nothing that looks good is ever really easy, is it?

Our new house, thankfully, had room for my "office". I've been in desperate need for a space close to where the kids play so I wasn't spending every night after bedtime in a panic because I didn't have enough time to finish something. I really am not a fan of staying up until 2am trying to finish orders every night. 

Can I say how awesome the paint colors are? The whole thing worked out eerily well. I went to Lowe's that day, and started picking out swatches so I could decide what color I wanted. I had decided on these two colors, and two pretty similar colors. We went to leave, and there on the clearance rack sat two gallons of paint. Not just any paint. Two gallons that matched the paint swatches that I had just picked out 30 seconds ago. And not cheap paint either. $38 a gallon paint. The best of the best. And they were marked down to $5 each.  I called my mom, my best friend, and my husband (who obviously didn't care), just in disbelief about saving over $50 on paint. 

I sat here looking at the wall for a while, trying to figure out measurements. I'm not bad at math by any means, but the more I looked at it, the more confused I made myself. So, I did what any smart person would do and I asked my math wiz husband to do it for me ;)

After explaining it to me, I ended up with this.

The wall is 78 inches wide, and 105 inches tall. So we divided by numbers that gave us even numbers. I wanted 5 "points" horizontally, so in actuality, I had to divide by 6. I had to add an extra number to make sure my points were centered instead of ending on the wall. Then I divided 105 by 15, and w were ready to go!

Now, I imagine there might be an easier way to do this. It was certainly time consuming. But with my OCD, it made the most sense to me and it made sure that every measurement was close to exactly right. Which I knew I would have a fit about if it wasn't. 

We took yarn and ran it up and across at every measurement, and used a push pin to keep it in. Then I would make a dot with a pencil where each piece of yarn intersected. Then I just took each piece down as I finished a row. It seemed like a lot of work just to make some dots, but I am SO glad that I did. It made it VERY easy and well worth the time and effort.

After taping! 

I used the dots to mark with each strip of tape. I did the inside of where the blue stripes would stay so that I didn't have to retape anything. 

There is only one thing I wish I would've done differently. I would've done a coat of the blue paint where the gray stripes were. I did have some gray paint leak through, and did have a few touchups to do. Doing a coat of blue first would've taken about the same time, but I would've been happier when I took the tape off. Most of the mistakes aren't noticeable unless you took the time to stare at the wall for imperfections, but OCD makes me do that.

Overall, I'm absolutely in love with it. The dresser I redid sits opposite of it, and I just love this room. It still needs a few personal touches, but I'm thrilled! Have any questions? Please ask!