Wonder Woman Shadow Box

Cross-posted on Creative Miscellany.

The other day, I saw a small shadow box at Homegoods. It was about 8 inches square (they had larger sizes, too, but the smallest one suited my purposes) and came in two finishes -- crackle white, and distressed grey. I didn't care for the crackle, and it would have left a texture to paint over without extensive sanding; the grey would be immediately paintable.

I brought it home and dug out a 12x12" sheet of Wonder Woman scrapbook paper I bought years ago and never knew what I was going to do with it. Apparently, I bought it for this.  :) The somewhat subdued colors of the paper look great with the grey frame... which I promptly decided not to paint, since they looked so good together.

The tricky part was getting the back off. It was nailed on with tiny tacks, down too deep in the fiberboard to pull, so I ended up carefully pushing the back off. This left the tacks above the surface of the lip of the frame and I knew getting them to line up would be a pain. Instead, I used a screwdriver as a nail sink, and tapped them down with a hammer.

I had to sand the back a little, because in addition to the tacks, there was also some glue. The backing board is 8" square; I cut my paper 7 3/4" square after I made sure that would cover all the backing visible from the front. I used a permanent glue stick (not too wet, but plenty sticky!) and smoothed the paper down with a credit card. I hit some of the dried glue inside the lip of the frame with sandpaper, dusted it off, and put a thin bead of Tacky Glue all around the lip. The backing board went on next, pressing firmly to seat it in places, and to ensure good contact with the glue.

And here's what it looks like finished:

front view

looking down into the shadow box; it's about 1 1/2" deep

Sorry; I forgot to take pics "in progress," but I hope you can follow along with my process. This was super simple, and a really quick project.

Some of you might be looking at that and thinking, "wow, that's a really busy background, the figure sort of gets lost." And you may be right. Even though the colors of the frame and background are not really bright, it's a patterned background for a small object. I am considering going through some of the old comics and finding a suitable speech bubble to cut out and put near her head, and mat it on white to give it some definition. Others of you might be thinking, "of all the action figures, you chose that one?" Yep! Because she was my first. Plus, she gets totally lost on the shelf with the other Wonder Woman figures (she's only 5" tall with her arm raised)

This idea would work for maybe a trio of small figures (GI Joe-sized) or a pair of larger ones, assuming they don't need more than 1 1/2" deep to stand in. You could showcase some of your favorite smaller figures this way. I say "favorite" because the shadow box was $15 -- expensive if you plan to put all your figs on display this way. And you don't have to go all out like I did and change the backing, you could leave it plain, paint it a different color, or paint an actual background if you're artistic.

If you try it for yourself, I'd love to see the results!

D' Fence

I was thinking of ways to keep the action figure dominoes off the floor, where they might get broken... or eaten...

Who, me??

Glass doors were not an option -- those kind of shelving units were just not in the budget. I briefly considered clear packing tape, just across the bottom, but dismissed the idea as both bad (would ruin the finish on the shelves) and ugly (shiny/distracting, plus dust would collect on the sticky side). Then it hit me: dowels, as a "fence" across the front of the shelves, fitting into the holes that were already there for the adjusting shelves! I grabbed a scrap piece of 1/4" dowel, but it was too wide to fit in the hole. No prob! I shaved it down in the electric pencil sharpener, and that worked beautifully. To the hardware store, Robin!

I bought 48" dowels that are 1/4" in diameter. I needed a bunch of them, because the shelves are 26" wide, which left me with a lot of "waste" (more on that shortly). I measured one, tapered it, fit it into place, then measured all the others against that.

For each dowel, I scored around the circumference with an X-acto knife, then with my thumbnails on either side of the scored line, broke the dowel to length -- very quick work. Then, each end was tapered in the pencil sharpener. Because the dowels are thin, they bend nicely to be fit in place.

Scored dowel

Broken to length

Tapered with the pencil sharpener

Fit into the pre-drilled holes

Worked perfectly!

And it doesn't look bad, either

The third shelves down don't have fences, because that is a fixed shelf, and had no pre-drilled holes. So I'll have to drill holes for those, or use glue, but I think drilling is the more sensible option. The nice thing about the dowels is that if they're just a little bit too long, they can be cut down a little with the pencil sharpener. If I glue them up, the width has to be perfect.

The "waste" pieces, I am going to experiment with finding a good (inexpensive) way to keep the figures from falling over in the first place. (Doll stands, even the small ones, run about $1.50-$2, and if I can make my own from scrap, yay me.)

UPDATE: The balsa wood and scrap dowel does indeed work to make a doll stand.

Princess Gwenevere can barely stand on her own with her teeny feet in those high heeled boots.

That's 1/4" balsa, a piece of the 1/4" dowel, some floral wire (heavy) and a little wood glue. It's very light weight, and the wire makes it a little top-heavy since the balsa is so light. BUT, the balsa cuts with an X-acto knife, "drills" easily with the tip of the blade, and sands quickly with an emery board.