Memento Pin Boxes

Here's another of my half-finished projects that I finished recently.  It seems like we pick up little knick-knacks here and there over the years, and while some of them just end up in the garbage or are given away, others are precious reminders of achievements or events that were important in our lives.  We tend to collect pins as mementos of our travels and accomplishments, but our pins were stored rolled up in a towel, inside of a box- not a great way to keep the memories alive!

I randomly got this shadow box at the dollar store a while back, and I realized that this would work well for my pins to go in, if I could find a way to add something to the back that they could be pinned to.

My husband had a lot more pins though, so I counted my lucky stars when I found this larger shadow box on sale at Michael's.

I pulled the backs out and measured them.  At this point, I lost steam and let them sit for a few weeks (not recommended).

I came back to it, re-measured, and pulled out some fancy fabric and some batting, and cut squares.

I just sewed the batting and the fabric together, and pinned my pins in.  Then I hot glued the top of the fabric to the top of the cardboard frame back.  It popped right in to the frame, and I decided I liked it standing on my desk shelf rather than hanging it on the wall.

At this point, I lost steam again, plus I couldn't find my husband's pins, so I let his frame sit under the futon in the office for 3 months (also not recommended).  A couple weeks ago, I serendipitously found the pins, so I was motivated to go digging under the futon to find the parts of the frame and put it together.  Alas, I could not find the back, until after 20 minutes of searching led me to the depths of the closet, where I found the frame back wedged between the wall and the storage bins.  Whew- disaster averted!  Ten minutes and one hot-glue-burned finger later, it was finished, and I proudly hung it on the wall.

Ta-da!