Triathlon Shadowbox Tutorial

Today is my hubby's birthday and since he's so into triathlons, what better gift than to make a shadowbox highlighting all his races? There's always stuff from the races and it's been sitting in a pile on the bar for oh, about a year. Time to make something...

I've been getting wine crates from a local wine shop to use as office storage, but the shallow ones make great shadowboxes:

Always a good idea to prime bare wood:

And paint to whatever works with your decor. Stained would also be pretty to highlight the wine details. Black seemed right for this collection of memorabilia:

For every race, the athletes get some things to take home - for tri's, they get a swim cap, race bib #, and medal for finishing. Here's the pile I'm working with. This would work with anything that might be too chunky for a scrapbook.

The racing bib #'s paper the back of the box and provide the backdrop - some invisible tape on the fronts and packing tape on the back kept everything in place:

I wanted the swim caps to hang somehow, but they're a little floppy in their natural, empty-headed state:

If they're going to hang like a display, they needed a frame. Since we always seem to have those dry cleaner's wire hangars, why not put them to use?

I snipped off a length of wire with my trusty pliers:

Bent it into an approx swim-cap-shaped frame:

and now the caps hang flat:

(As you can painly plainly see, I haven't gotten around to painting the Gator office.) Now, how to hang these puppies...my first attempt was to string picture hanging wire from top to bottom:

I tried using clips to hang the caps and it really didn't work, so I punched holes in each cap:

Threaded the wire through them, twisting it as I went to hold the cap in place:

This was the hardest part of this whole project, but it came out fine:

The medals come with handy-dandy ribbons to hang them from, so it was easy to staple them to the top of the crate:

Add his plaque for 3rd place in his age group and there you have it; the 2010 triathlon season on display!

He was very happy with his birthday surprise:

He had just finished a triathlon this morning, so the present was very appropriate. I'm so proud of him!!

***Update***  Frank WON the triathlon this morning! Nice birthday present for my sweetie! It's incredible what he's done in 2010, and 2011's season is just starting - GO FRANK!

I'm linking this up to:





Just linked this up to Debbie Doos Newbie link party - thanks Debbie!