standing in the hall of fame

Another year has gone by, and it's time for Zach's birthday again. He heard a few weeks ago that, coincidentally on his actual birthday, he would be inducted into his high school's hall of fame! In light of this, it seemed especially appropriate that I frame some of his track medals for his birthday. This is something that I've had in mind for awhile. He's had one shadow box of medals hanging in our room, but it's been looking pretty sad. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of it, so you'll just have to trust me. The medals were attached to the cardboard back with velcro, which peeled off on some of the larger medals. My initial plan was to just figure out a better way to attach the medals, but when I took the frame down and looked at it, many of the little bendy parts that hold the back into the frame had broken off, so I wasn't convinced of its long-term last-ability. Since I wanted to frame more medals, I just got an extra to replace that one. 

Zach showed me the boxes of his medals. He identified the most prestigious ones and helped me sort them by years.

I had some foam left over from my cushion project, so I decided to use that to pin the medals to. I borrowed an electric knife to cut up the foam. I didn't do a very good job of cutting even strips, but once they got covered with fabric, you couldn't really tell. 

Speaking of fabric, I covered one with leftover fabric from my curtains. For the other three, I picked up some red, white, and blue fabric to match the medal ribbons, most of which I removed. I thought that not having all those ribbons would give the displays a cleaner look, but I still wanted to pay homage to them. I also ended up incorporating one ribbon in each of the shadow boxes. 

I wrapped the foam pieces in the fabric and hot-glued it in place. I also glued on some of the medal ribbons. 

Then I pinned on the medals. Pretty simple :-) 

The one will get hung back up in our bedroom, and the other three will be hung in Zach's very large walk-in closet. Maybe one day I'll do all the rest of his medals too, but he does have a lot! 

And here's Zach getting his plaque for the hall of fame. There was a little ceremony at the school Friday evening with dinner, and then he got to be introduced before the homecoming game on Saturday.