Skylander Island Shelves

Skylander Island Shelves

One of the games our entire family enjoys is Skylanders. We play it together, laugh and cheer when it’s a fight against Kaos. Our family quotes the games the way other families quote movies.

It’s now game five for the Skylander series and each family member has characters they like play from the different elements. We slowly added more characters with each game as it came out. As a result we have ended up with what I thought was a lot of Skylanders (until I looked up the list for each element); too many to keep organized easily on a single shelf.

So as the next organization project for our family room my husband requested that I make something to organize the Skylander characters better. He wanted something that would allow us to easily find different characters from certain elements when we needed them.

I went to work researching online.  As I looked there were some neat shelves and organization systems I saw others create.

 However, I saw some limitations in imitating the structure of what I had found.  The limitations being: one, not a lot of room for expansion, two, visually bland and three it needed to be fun and easy to know where to put the Skylanders; so that our kids would want to put things away when they were done.

 I acknowledge that my issue with the visual is not a real problem but if I was going to go to put in the work to make eleven shelves: one for each element and one for the magic items I wanted it to be more visually interesting.

Eventually I decided to make shelves that looked like the islands you fight on. This way if we ended up with more Skylanders than could fit on a shelf for that element than I could build another shelf and make a bridge joining the two islands. Problem two, it’s not visually bland to me. Problem number three, only time will tell if it’s going to work.

If you are interested in seeing how I built these continue reading.

Step#1

I took a board that was 16” wide and 26” tall and drew with marker the shape of an island. Then I cut it out.

Step#2

  

  

 

 I took wood slats from the bunkbed our girls broke and laid the slat next to the top of the island. Then I marked the edge and cut it. 

  

 

 Then I took a ruler and marked a 4 inch line from the top edge and then took another slat and laid it on top of the wood against the line I had drawn and then cut.

  

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

  I repeated this step measuring down every 4 inches and cutting the wood to match the width of the island. I did this until I was at the bottom of the island.

Step#3

 

 I then took the slat that I had cut for the top of the island and Spiderman Jr held the board in place while I pre-drilled the holes. Then we put the screws in from the top. 

 

  

  

 

 

 

 For all the shelves below the top shelf we pre-drilled through the back of the shelf and then screwed it to the island.

Step#4

 

Then we painted the top shelf green like grass and everything below that brown like dirt and let it dry.

Step#5

We used a stud finder to make sure there were no electrical problems in the wall. Marked where it was safe and drilled holes for wall anchors in the walls and islands. Then we screwed the shelves into the wall anchors.

Step#6

The kids got to decide which island is the home for which elements. There was quite a bit of debate among our kids as to which element needed which island. It was nice to see them discuss and come to their own agreements.

Materials              ___________            Cost

Wood- from a broken bunk bed 

and scraps from other projects               0.00

Screws- left over from another project

Paints-green and brown                         7.00

Wall anchors -                                        7.00

Total Cost___________________________

                                                              14.00

DIY Donkey Kong Console Shelves

Donkey Kong

 Console Shelves

Our older kids are home from school and out come the piles of papers and books and they are spread all over our dining room table while I am trying to prep dinner and set the table. I am left two choices, one:  if I set food on the table as it is finished something might get knock over onto their homework, two: I can wait until they are done to set things on the table which results in kids snitching parts of dinner as they are passing in and out of the kitchen when I am not looking. I sigh and asked (again)”Why don’t you use the desk? We bought a desk for you to do your homework on.” The kids respond as usual,” There’s no room. The consoles are all over the desk.”

                            

This conversation has happened I don’t know how many times and the kids are right. Getting them a desk was good but if we use all that space for something else they can’t really use their desk for homework. This was the first organization problem I wanted to fix but the curtains needed to come first.  Now that they are done it is time to work on getting those consoles off their desk.

Step#1

Measurements

We measured the space between the TV and the curtains. We also measured the how big each console was then we decided to make all the shelves the same size as was needed for our largest console.  We also measured how much vertical space we would need in between each shelf. We used our Skylanders portals as our gauge, we put our tallest Skylander on top of the portal, which was Ninjini, then added a little cushion on top of that so we would be able to take the Skylanders on and off without difficulty.

Step#2

Cutting

I cut out all five shelves for the consoles to rest on with our jig saw.  I also cut a façade for the front face of the shelves. In the Donkey Kong game things are tilted. If we were to make our shelves tilted then the consoles would be in danger of falling off all the time. The look of tilted shelves is not worth the cost of replacing consoles.  So we decided that we could just tilt the front facade of the shelves and have the shelves themselves be level on the wall. If you are curious about dimensions, I cut our shelves 12” long and 14” wide so that the longer distance of 14” is starting from the wall going out into the room. The facades are 12” long x 2” tall.

Step#3

Painting part 1

After everything was cut I took black spray paint and coated one side of each the shelves and facades. I waited four hours then flipped it over and coated the other sides with spray paint. This process took a couple of days because I wanted to make sure that the shelves look even in color and were very shiny. Which necessitated lots of coats of spray paint.

Step#4

Construction

I then looked at the images of the original Donkey Kong video game and at the order that the beams are tilted in. I tried to replicate that with the facades I screwed onto the shelves I cut.

Step#5

Painting part 2, Cutting and Gluing

I then took some Popsicle sticks I had purchased for another project and cut the ends off. I then painted these red and outlined the façades in red sticks to represent the beams and hot glued them on.Next I placed more red painted sticks against the outline I had glued on and marked with a red colored pencil the angles I would need to cut for it to fit in between the outlines of the beams. I cut those angles and hot glued them in. I kept repeating this process till I had gone all the way across the façades for all the shelves.

Step#6

Mounting and Painting part 3

My husband then took L braces which came with wall anchors and placed the anchors and L braces on the wall. He made sure that he left the distance we had determined would be needed vertically in between the shelves. I love how careful he is, it’s a talent of his.  Then He set the shelves on top of the L braces and screwed the braces to the shelves.

I then painted the L braces with black acrylic paint on the under sides of the shelves and blue acrylic paint on the part attached to the walls to make the braces disappear as much as I could manage.

Step#7

Painting part 4, Cutting and Gluing

My husband then placed the consoles on the shelves.

I then took more Popsicle sticks and painted them teal on both sides to start making the ladders for connecting the levels.  I looked at my Donkey Kong image again to see where the ladders were in the game at level 1.  I then cut off the rounded edges of the ladders and did any touch up of paint necessary. Then I hot glued them in place on top of the façade.I did have to change some of the placement of the ladders because I didn’t want to block where the disc trays slide open.  So I had to accept it being as close as I could manage to level 1 of Donkey Kong.

Step#8

Donkey Kong

We have a Donkey Kong that came with our recent Skylanders game we bought and my husband thought it would be best place at the top.  It was a really nice extra touch that I had not thought of that I really liked.

Materials                                                             Cost

OSB boards- used on the shelves- left over 

from the Skylanders valence boxes-                   0.00

2x2 boards- used for the facades 

-from our daughter’s broken bunk bed-               0.00

Black spray paint-some left over from 

chomp chain curtain tie back I made 1 ½ can 

and 3 cans new-                                                  3.00

Red paint-                                                              .50

Teal paint-                                                              .50

 Hot glue- already had                                          0.00

Screws- left over from another project                 0.00

L braces- we bought for another project 

we didn’t do so I am not sure whether to 

count this as a cost so ….                                   20.70

Total Cost____________________________________   

                                                                            24.00