Have you seen the meme that says “I hope you step on a Lego?” Yeah….not the funnest thing to do. Some of my best compilations of 4 letter words have come from stepping on those cursed little plastic bricks.
You have to admit though, they are fun to build & you can seriously build anything out of them. Carter and I watched the Lego documentary one dreary afternoon and they replicated an X-Wing fighter from Star Wars. Not sure what that is? Think along the lines of a full size fighter jet…made from Lego. Holy Frick, right?!
And here I get all excited when I’ve built a dump truck (target age 7-9 ?).
Between the 2 boys we probably have 100,000 Lego men, give or take 100. They are EVERYWHERE & there is nothing worse than stepping on a Lego man who’s taking a nap with his arms extended out in front of him. NOTHING. In the mind of a 9 year old though, all Lego men don’t measure up the same. Darth Vader rules one army of men while Jack Sparrow commands the other. Zombie cheerleader…well she’s currently sitting leg-less in the bottom of the bin.
It was time to find a place to display them all.
I found the perfect solution in a small canoe shaped shelf my grandma snagged for me at a yard sale over the summer. It’s super cute, but not the most functional piece, sitting at only 21″ high with a 5″ clearance between each shelf.
To start I gave the whole thing two coats of Annie Sloan’s Napoleonic Blue. A few years ago we had bought a Soccer Pitch lego set at a yard sale and it came with these large green pieces that sat as high as a normal piece of Lego. There were only a few and not the most useable pieces when building something so I knew they wouldn’t be missed if gone from the bin. It saved me from having to go out and buy a sheet and then cut it down to size.
I glued the pieces down with heavy duty carpenters glue to each shelf, making sure to centre them on the shelves. I used a couple of long thin pieces along the sides of the top shelf to extend the area the men could be put.
Thinking I was done, I took a step back and it just seemed a bit…blah. So I went on a hunt and found a discarded Lego calendar from 2014. Cha-Ching! Picking a few of the pictures, I cut them to down to size & fit them in the background of each shelf. Using mod podge I adhered them to the back and then applied a thin coat overtop to seal them down. Once dried it was good to go.
What I love about the backgrounds is that it now allows the boys to not only display their Lego men, but to also use their imaginations and set up scenes to go with each background. Instead of just having a display, it’s another outlet for creative play! Win, win!