Simple Vertical Hanging DIsplay

I was struggling to find a good way to display headbands for sale, and Pinterest was not particularly helpful. I saw something that was interesting, but also posed its own problem: it needed to hang, itself. But the shape of it made me think of something else: tomato cages.

So that night I ran to the hardware store and got a galvanized steel tomato cage (it was about $5, and sturdier than the usual dark green ones) that had 4 rings. It will sit on the 4th ring as my base, leaving 3 rings to use for display, and the 4 exposed wires at the top (that I trimmed, using a pipe cutting tool) would then be stuck into a styrofoam head to finish the display.

I used a can of spray paint I had from another project to paint it. Some of the wires were welded unevenly into the top ring, and it was going to tear up any table covering I set it on, so I bought some thick batting as a remnant and some clearance ribbon. I cut the batting into strips about 2 inches wide (I only needed 2 strips), and wrapped it around the top (soon to be bottom) ring. Then I wrapped the ribbon around that, securing it with hot glue. It's 2 1/2 inch ribbon, 5 yards, and I used the whole spool. (I did fold the ends over a few times to enclose the raw edges.)

Painted tomato cage, wrapped tier.

The styrofoam head was one that I had, I découpaged it with tissue paper and paper napkins that had a pattern I liked, then painted on a face to give her some personality. After carefully skewering the head onto the wires (it's uneven – that's kind of the nature of styrofoam sometimes, especially when the wires are at angles, as mine were), I put hot glue into the holes to help anchor it in place.

Meet Ophelia

For the display part of it, I ordered wire clips from Amazon. Unlike clothespins, these won't break apart if they're twisted. Plus, I can permanently attach them to my display by bending open one of the loops and closing it back again around the ring of my display. (Clips don't get lost, and I can control the number of items displayed per section, preventing overcrowding.)

Wire clips, pliers wrapped with duct tape (so it didn't mar the coating on the clips).

The clip loops are easily bent with pliers, but I did put some tape on the pliers so the PVC coating on the clips didn't get marred. Once I figured the best number of items per section, I was able to put that number on each section and add the headbands when I was done.

Figuring the best number /section.

The finished display is a little over 4 feet high (50.5", 1.28m), but it's not a floor display – it's intended for a tabletop. On a 30" table, Ophelia will stand 6'8.5" (2m), and the top tier is conveniently at eye-level for most people. The bottom tier I am reserving for kids' headbands.

Filled with inventory.

I suppose my next project could be to find or make a lazy susan sort of thing so the whole thing can rotate, but I have concerns that would make it tippy if someone tried to spin it too fast. Unless I am prepared to anchor it to the spinner (making it less portable), I think I'll leave it as-is, and put it on a corner of a table.

Ophelia, modelling.

The open space under her neck will be used to hang signage with pricing. It will be at eye level for most people and done with the same typeface that I use for business cards and other booth signage. I have some acid-green tulle that I'll use to hang it with.

I'm hugely pleased with the way this turned out, and I hope this serves as inspiration for you, if you have vertical display issues for small items.

Hallowe'en Comes Early!

I have a ton of action figures in the basement, displayed on Ikea bookshelves. One shelf had some of my Hallowe'en Barbies, but they were boxed and three deep on the shelf, so you couldn't see all of them. I got the idea to move them to the children's library (AKA, the guest room) and display them a little differently after I saw this blog post. I loved Valerie's idea of using props that are the right scale ("play scale" according to some Google searching), and decided that I needed a spooky tree for the witches. I had in my head an idea, and today I made it work. (Photo intensive!)

I forgot to take a photo of the first step, gathering a piece of dowel and a wire skeleton that had been a floral bush. Both things I had on hand, it just required me pulling the flowers off of the bush and taping them together. The dowel was even a good length without needing to be trimmed, because it was from another project already.

The dowel and the wire skeleton taped together, and all my gathered supplies.

Once I had those taped together, I wrapped the bottom part of the dowel in sheets of foam packing material, and pushed a toilet paper roll over the end.

Then I started layering newspaper around that, and pushed bent chenille stems into the cardboard tube. Those are going to be roots.

I wrapped the wire stems with more chenille stems, making branches.

It's about 32 inches tall.

I used newspaper to bulk up the base of the branches before I started taping them. The newspaper is also important because it enables the trunk and branches to be compressed (by squeezing them) after the tape is applied. This gives it a textured, wrinkled surface, looking more like bark.

I ended up using two different masking tapes, the second one being Scotch brand; the other brand wasn't sticking to itself very well. The Scotch masking tape did much better.

I added two more branches scavenged from more floral stems, because having branches only at the top looked weird. Once I had wrapped the entire tree -- branches and roots -- I used a twisted ring of newspaper to make a knothole on the trunk. The roots are reinforced with toothpicks, but it still doesn't sit quite level. I think I will probably glue a piece of balsa to the bottom to help it sit flat.

To show scale, with one of the dolls that will be part of the display.

I actually ended up cutting open the bottom and stuffing a couple of rocks into the cardboard tube, because it was really top-heavy. I haven't decided yet how I will color the tree, paint or stain or shoe polish... and I want to make "Spanish moss" with dyed cheesecloth to drape over the branches. (The guest room was supposed to be Mardi Gras inspired, so to keep it at least a little on topic, these witches are going to be in New Orleans, since NOLA also has a humongous Hallowe'en celebration.)

But it's mostly done; from concept to execution in one day. I even stained the wood shelves to match the bookcases that are in the library!

UPDATE #1: I did end up spray painting it flat black. I decided that while the shoe polish treatment does look cool (google: shoe polish masking tape), it's not the effect I want. So once this dries, I'm going to dry brush brownish-grey on the high spots. In the meantime, I need to hunt up some cheesecloth for the Spanish moss... I also need to do something about the base, because it really doesn't want to stand upright.

UPDATE #2: I added thin pieces of balsa to the base to help stabilize it. I also finished the detail painting I wanted to do, along with a little surprise.

Without flash

With flash

Surprise!

UPDATE #3: Cheesecloth moss is finished! I trimmed the "finished" edges off the strip of cheesecloth, because I wanted it to be ragged. I cut it into strips of varying lengths and widths, and played with the placement on the tree until I had what I felt were enough.

I used grey and yellow-green acrylic paint in quite a bit of water and added the strips. It wasn't enough pigment, though, so I added black paint and added the strips to the paint/water bath. I squeezed out the water, and patted the cheesecloth with a paper towel. There were some bits of paint that didn't get completely dissolved, and that left some darker spots on some of the strips. I used a tension rod in a doorway to hang the strips to dry. I could have dried them flat, but the paint stiffens the cloth; if I wanted them to hang over the branches, I needed to hang them from something.

They also wanted to curl into themselves, so I had to gently pull the strips back open. I didn't want it to be completely flat, though, because Spanish moss doesn't hang in a tidy sheet from the trees, either. Once the pieces were dry (didn't take long), I started putting them back on the tree. The color didn't have enough green in it, and the moss is a living thing, so I used the tip of a loaded brush to apply dots of the yellow-green randomly to the hanging strips, just like you might see on living moss.

True fact -- Spanish moss isn't moss at all. It's an angiosperm, and belongs to the same family as bromeliads.

Wonder Woman Shadow Box

Cross-posted on Plastic Heroines.

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!