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.

Can't stop me now!

I promised you a new DIY project, didn't I? Well, I finally found some time to finish it. I wanted to make Breleigh a new tank top before summer is already here starts. We do live in Florida, after all, and winter doesn't stick around for too long. I didn't  have a pattern, but patterns and I don't agree anyway, so I just kind of went with it. It did take me four hours, but since I started from scratch, I guess it could have been worse. So here is all of my hard work and pin pokes on my little beauty of a model. She is gorgeous, isn't she?

I had to work hard for that smile. Once I finally did get a smile she said "Mooooom! Take a picture of a funny face!" So, in typical Breleigh fashion...

 

 

Don't be surprised, this is normal for her :)

I am a DIY ninja.

Okay, not really. But I just saw the Walmart commercial about being a ninja, and I quietly giggle every time. Quietly because I get made fun of otherwise. Anyway, back on track.
One of my goals for this year was to do at least one DIY project a month. Well I'm awesome and just finished my second one of the month (The third will be done by the end of this week, holla! Wait for pictures). I have a slight obsession with Pinterest, so while I'm not cool enough to think of any of this stuff on my own, I like to think I make nice additions to the massive overload of ideas that is Pinterest.
I needed something for the blank wall in our bedroom. I had a frame that I got for free because it had a defect, and took the mat out since it was the defective part. The frame itself is gorgeous, I think.

 

Supplies: Frame, one piece of scrapbook paper, any kind of stick on letters (or just print on the paper if you want), and some ribbon! I already had the frame, so I spent $5 after coupons for the rest.

After putting the letters in. I had to glue the ribbon to the back of the frame since it didn't have any kind of hanging hooks or anything.

And you may laugh at this, but unless you have a man around to do the laundry, you don't realize how awesome it is ;) He does laundry, I vacuum. Trust me, it's an even trade where hate for chores is concerned.

So easy, and literally took me 10 minutes if you don't count the drying time for the ribbon. And should make for interesting comments with the dry erase marker lol

DIY, Rewind.

I redid my daughters' dressers a while back, and it seems they were well liked, thankfully :) A lot of people asked me how I did it (a couple people asked me how much they cost, score!), so I guess this is an easy way to do it all at once! I found two identical small Broyhill three drawer dressers (in near perfect condition) for $20 for the pair. Half of the pictures have managed to vanish into thin air, so this is what I could find.

This is what they looked like prior to painting. 

After sanding.

After two coats of white paint.

This was the most time consuming parts to do. I had to paint each drawer face and handle pink or green. Then I brushed on some mod podge, and added the diecut type scrapbook paper (I just cut it to size before hand). I added another coat of Mod Podge on top of it, and it dried completely clear!