DIY Shield

When I married my husband I inherited some pretty awesome nephews and a fabulous niece.  They are a ton of fun to be around and my husband and I love playing with them. Our garage is the go to place for projects, so last spring we helped the oldest make a Derby Car for Boy Scouts.  So when he needed to make a shield for a school project, he thought it would be fun to make it out of wood.  We were of course happy to oblige.

For projects like these I think it is really important to teach the kids a few basics in DIY and tool safety.  So while I did most of the heavy cutting, the rest of the project was all Jax.   This was a simple project that took less than 30 minutes to do and has a super fun result!

Our supplies were:

• 1/4″ piece of plywood
• leather straps from Michael’s
• staple gun
• sandpaper
• jigsaw
• paint

First, since this was a school project we had to follow certain dimensions.  Yes I own more than 3 measuring tapes, no we couldn’t find a single one, hence why the husband is using my sewing measuring tape to measure the plywood.  What can I say, we live on the edge (of insanity… daily).

Once we had the dimensions marked, Jax showed me a picture of what he wanted it to look like and I free handed the shape onto the board and cut the shield out with the jigsaw.

Once that was done, we cut our leather strips.  We found these on the same aisle as belt making supplies (?!?) at Michael’s.  We just stapled them onto the back of the shield, making sure to use staples that didn’t go all the way through the board.  And since this is Jax’s shield we just placed them over his arm to find placement and spacing.

Next, Jax and his dad sanded the top and edges of the shield.  We taught Jax the #1 rule of sanding: always go with the grain of the wood.

It’s starting to look like a real shield now!

Next up, painting.  Jax’s assignment is to draw things on each of the four quadrants of the shield to represent him and his family (I’m pretty sure we all did a project like this in elementary school).  The plan was for him to do that part at home, but he wanted the background to be white so we decided to spray paint it in our garage (especially since I already had the spray paint box set up from the mirror).

After two thin coats, the shield was done!

This would be a fun way to spruce up a superhero costume for Halloween! It can be cut out in any shape, painted with any decor, and Jax was pretty excited about getting to be a superhero!

And just for a fun little side note… since there were 3 other kiddos we set them up in the living room to watch a movie on TV (unfortunately my house isn’t super kid friendly and their normal place to play is in mass chaos right now as we try to revamp it).  We weren’t out in the garage for very long, but when we came back inside, all three kids had decided it would be more fun to watch the movie from inside Lexie’s crate. I’ll spare you the picture so it doesn’t look like child abuse, but your imaginations can run wild.  Oh to be a kid again…