Custom Birch Shadow Box for Athlete Gifts

Описание: [Yes, this is an absurdly long video... but I suspect these things are primarily background anyway...]

My athlete Eliise brought me a set of incredible gifts when she came to training camp this summer.

First was a signed photo of her snatching 100kg at the European championships.

Then was her lifter of the year award—normally the federation gives one to the coach as well, but because I’m not Estonian, they chose not to.

And finally a folding knife her grandfather made.

I tried to turn down the last two, but she wasn’t having it.

So of course I wanted a worthy display for them.

I couldn’t find a shadow box deep enough to fit the award, and I wanted the width to match the framed photograph.. so the obvious solution was making my own box.

I used leftover birch from my treehouse Murphy bed build along with only materials and hardware I already had—the only exception was the plexiglass, which I robbed out of a cheap picture frame.

Dimensions got a little odd to match the photo frame width and accommodate the total height for the intended wall space, meaning the glass didn’t fit exactly right, so I had to be a bit creative with that.

The back attachment situation was clumsy but I didn’t have enough birch to make the box any deeper, and it was also already so deep, I figured this wouldn’t really be visible anyway.

Originally I’d intended on painting it black to match the adjacent frames but… it’s nice wood. So I just oiled it and I don’t care if it doesn’t match.