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