Skip to main content

Award Artistry

Today was the girls first swim meet. When we got home tanned, tired, and flush with new ribbons and medals, I told the kids to put their awards away and get ready for a shower. They said they couldn't because they didn't know where ribbons go. Now this is 90% procrastination, but 10% of their complaint is real. Their ribbons are in the memory boxes, in drawers, on dressers, and generally all over the house. So after a little rest I told the kids we could make something to put their ribbons and medals on.

Since it's the beginning of summer, and I have an online shopping problem, we have lots of good cardboard boxes that I thought we could put to some good use. Here's what we made:




And here's how we made them:

Step One: Find a good, thick box and cut a panel off.


Yep, I posted a picture of that. I've been well trained in the art of being fair by my girls and if one step gets a picture, they all get a picture. :)

Step Two: Pick your fabric and plan out your final product. Map out how you want your final product to look and then start gluing the fabric to the cardboard. Abby wanted hers all one color so it was easier to plan out than Briana's. With Briana's the order of the gluing was important to the design. Leave fabric wrapping over the sides of the cardboard - it will look prettier in the end that way.



The back doesn't matter. When you nail it to the wall, no one will see the back.


(Unless you post it online.)

Step Three: Turn it over and admire. You're basically done.



Step Four: Use push pins to add your ribbons and use large basting/safety pins to attach your medals. If you push the basting pins in from the back with the hook side (vs the pointy side) on the bottom, they will hold well. I put lots of extra pins on so that next time they get a medal (like Tuesday's swim meet) they can pin it on themselves.




Quick and easy, and made all with supplies I had around the house. If you want to spruce it up a bit you can put it in a shadowbox to better preserve the ribbons and have it look better on the wall. You can also use ribbons, jewels, or anything else to better decorate. If you crisscross ribbons and use round pushpins where they cross, and on the edges, the kids can slide the ribbons in.

Now there's no excuse when I tell the kiddies to put their awards away...not that the kids won't come up with a new one. The artistry for awards medal goes to Mommy. Your move kiddies.

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rhythm Nation

Can rhythm be taught? I hope so. Both of my kids are very excited about their competitive cheer and competitive hip hop teams, and my youngest added ballet to that recently. The kiddies want to dance; the parents lack the necessary genes. But I firmly believe that talent and ability only change your starting point; hard work, determination, passion, and not letting that starting point stop you determine the finish. If my kids want to be dancers, then dancers they shall be. So, where should a rhythm-less parent start? Googling rhythm activities for kids got me a lot of what their violin (Briana) and piano (Abigail) teachers do - read some sheet music and clap out the beat. We do that, and we do it well. The kids have been in various music classes since about 1 year old, mostly for fun and socialization, and both read music well for their ages. The problem is, the kids are like me. I am a master chair dancer. If you see me dancing in my seat, you might even think I'm quite good (...

Electrifying Halloween

My kiddies have discovered the age old joy of running around in socks and then shocking each other. Fun to the kiddies, less so for the mommy. But I'm a good sport and I can get in on the static electricity fun. I tell my kids as we're driving to school to ask around today and come home with a good definition of static electricity. I meant to ask their teachers and maybe the librarian, or look it up in a book, but they came home telling me that none of their friends knew the definition. Abby, never wanting to not know something says that she knows exactly what it is, "when you have electricity and it is static which means it doesn't move." So I tell them that static electricity means a charge that is created by friction. Who knows what friction means? Briana says, "it is a force that stops you from doing stuff." "Like Mommy can be friction if you want to eat all the Halloween candy," adds Abby. So when you walk around in socks on the rug ...

Undercover Chromatography

My kids are really into two things this week. The first is capillary action. Ever since we did our last experiments on capillary action , Abigail has managed to work the phrase in every single day. Even her My Little Pony train tracks were set up in a dumbbell formation so Abby could say the train was showing the movement of water between cups in capillary action. I’m happy that the idea has stuck with her, so I’d love to reinforce it. The second is spies. Ever since we watched Spy Kids on family movie night, and got Briana a book that came with secret spy ears and a few other spy toys, it’s all we talk about. We are even planning a spy birthday party for Abigail, even though her birthday is a significant amount of time from now. So I decided that today, since the kids are off of school for a teacher in service day, I’m going to show the kids how to use chromatography to detect who the bad guy is. You see, the bad guy has left a note, and it threatens all that...