Tuscan has racked up a lot of medals with swimming, running, and soccer and he wanted them displayed in his room somehow. Previously, they just kind of hung from random spots… off door knobs, off trophies, off his bedposts, but I wanted to show them off in a way that he didn’t have to hunt all over his room for them. So, while rummaging through Home Goods a few weeks ago, I picked up a couple of display boxes that I’ve seen at lots of places (Michaels, Hobby Lobby, thrift stores to name a few) thinking at the time that I could some SOMETHING with them, but I didn’t know what exactly.
So they sat in my basement storage for a few months then as I was thinking about re-doing Tuscan’s room, it hit me that the cubbies were the perfect size to display medals. So, out of storage they came and after thinking of the best way to rig the medals for maximum viewage (that’s now a word 🙂 ), here’s what I came up with:
You need:
- Wooden dowels
- A glue gun
- Command Strips
- A display box
- Scissors
- Medals!
- Something to cut the dowel into pieces (I used my miter saw)
First, I measured about how long I would need my dowel pieces to be by just placing a medal in one of the cubbies and measuring where I wanted the medal to eventually lie. I recycled an old drying rack by using the dowels from the rack which is why my dowels look a little rough but they’ll be hidden from view so ugly doesn’t matter. If you don’t have an old drying rack just lying around waiting to be upcycled, Home Depot or Lowe’s has dowels and if don’t have a miter saw, they can cut the dowel into pieces for you if you have the measurements beforehand.
After cutting all the dowel pieces, I cut a velcro Command Strip into little squares, then put them together, velcro side together, and stuck one side to the medal and one side to the dowel. I used Command Strips because I didn’t want to damage the medals with glue and the Command Strips just peel right off if and when I take the medals out of the cubbies. I also thought that if Tuscan wanted to change out the medals, he could just pull apart the velcro from the dowel and medal, stick another velcro square on the new medal, and stick it back onto the dowel.
Then I hot glued the other side of the dowel to the back of the cubby and positioned the medal where I needed it to be before the hot glue dried. If the dowel is not long enough, you can remedy that problem by sticking on a Command Strip square or two (in my case three sometimes) then glue the command strip to the back of the box. That actually worked better since there was more area on the square to glue to the box than there was area on the dowel (hope that made sense!).
I then tucked in all the ribbons so that they could provide an interesting background:
Repeat for all the medals and that’s it, you’re done!
I bought two of these cubby boxes so that I can add more medals to the count.
It was a super easy project and I love the way it turned out! It’s just one more thing to add to Tuscan’s room to make it more “Tuscan.” 🙂
FYI: I know it seems like I was compensated by Command Strips since that was the main ingredient to putting this puppy together, and I used that phrase, “COMMAND STRIP” about 50 times in this post, but I wasn’t. I just really like them and use them all the time. I also like typing “COMMAND STRIP” and asking my husband to pick up “COMMAND STRIPS” from the store. “PICK UP SOME COMMAND STRIPS NOW!” End FYI.
