Quick & Easy DIY

We needed to find a way to display Thing 2's "bibs" {the number he wears at a race}.  Prior to his room redo, they had been tacked willy-nilly to his walls like so:

Before the room redo

I came up with great displays for his medals & trophies {which I will post on later}, but the bibs had me stumped.
The obvious solution would be scrapbooking 'em, but we aren't much in to scrapbooking {if we don't care to display the memorabilia in some fashion, we tend to just throw it out rather than accumulate tons of scrapbooks that no one really looks at...I never really got the big deal about compulsively keeping old homework or attendance awards or whatever-- I used to have some of mine that my Mom had kept, and the kids had a good giggle over my penmanship when we stumbled upon the box in which it had been shoved, but that's about it-- not much bang for the trouble of keeping it all that time, you know?  I certainly wouldn't have thought my Mom loved me less if she hadn't kept my kindergarten report card, & with my own kids I don't need progress reports to remember what they were like when they were younger.  But hey, that's me & I'm not exactly known for my sentimentality...and now I am totally digressing}  ANYWAY...
During the course of the clean up, we had to deal with a few inexpensive pieces of furniture that had been damaged  & therefore regulated to the basement.   We decided to break them down for parts, so to speak {you'll see the further results of this scavenge in later posts}.  It was in the course of this that I came up with a plan for the bibs:

Supplies:

1. Mod Podge {I used Matte, but whichever finish you prefer is fine -n- dandy}
2. Chip Brush {aka a throw away brush}
3. Double stick tape
4. A board {we used a salvaged particle board which had been painted black.  Thing 3 gave it a light sanding to rough it up, then we wiped it with a red oak stain to give it a grungy boy look, then let it dry overnight}
5. Items you wish to display {this would work for children's drawings or certificates or postcards-- whatever}
• If you are unsure whether or not the ink on the item you will be gluing will run {as we were with the bib that Thing 2 had written his time & finish on} you can give it a quick spray with polycrylic or, in a pinch, with extra strength hairspray--if you apply the first coat of mod podge quickly and lightly, the hairspray will be enough to prevent the ink from running

Make sure your board/surface is clean.  We trimmed off the pin holes {where the runners use safety pins to attach the bib to their uniform} & neatened up the tattered edges as best we could.  Then we did a dry run, placing the numbers on the board like doing a puzzle.  I put a small piece of double sided tape on the back of each bib, to keep them from moving as I played with the layout {the tape prevented the bibs from wiggling, but still allowed me to pull them off & move them as desired}.  Once we were happy with the arrangement we lifted them off one at a time, coated the board underneath the bib with mod podge, then reattached the bib in place.

Please excuse my chipped nails...we've been working!  We purposely left the bibs wrinkled to give the finished piece texture.  Once all of the bibs were attached, we coated the the whole collection with Mod Podge to seal.  We did two topcoats allowing time to dry to the touch in between coats.

Once it was dry {we left it overnight}, I drilled two holes at the top & two at the bottom to attach it to Thing 2's wall {you could use a picture hanger to minimize holes if you'd rather}.

For one of his room colors, Thing 2 chose a warm asphalt gray {it used to be black, as you can tell from the first pic from this post}.  The gray looks fantastic & crisp in person, but makes it rather hard to get good lighting for photographs, sigh.  Trust me, it looks awesome cool, & Thing 2 is very proud to have his bibs turned into a work of art!  We plan on doing this with the bibs from each year of high school {the above is freshman year}-- which will give him 4 nice pieces by the time he graduates!  Much better than wasting away in a scrapbook, don't you think?

Tomorrow I'll be back with my take on how best to display trophies~*

Hope your Tuesday is smashing grand!!