Printer's Tray into Souvenir Pin Display

oops, just noticed the dirty vent- guess I need to clean that off!

and that ugly chair will not be staying ugly for too much longer

We tend to buy pins when we go places- they're small, inexpensive, and have the name of the place we visited, so we can remember where we visited. Much better than t-shirts or mugs or something :)

My sister put some felt in a large picture frame to display pins from her travels. I thought about doing the same, but decided to use a printer tray I found at a yard sale years ago.

I thought I took a picture of the tray on the wall before I got started, but I can't find it, and this is the best I could find

The tray has a wood bottom with wood dividers. I didn't want to stick pins into the wood, so I came up with a process that works well for holding the pins and looks nice.

I started by cutting rectangles of thick (6mm) craft foam for each little opening. I made sure that each piece of foam was cut just a little larger than the space so that the foam would stay in place because of the snug fit.

I then cut matching pieces of thin, sticky-back foam, and laid those pieces out on sheets of gray craft felt. I found it was easiest to cut the felt around the foam, rather than cut them separately and try to match them up.

the space with the two pins already in it was my test space where I made sure this would work before I cut all those pieces of foam

The last steps were to put double-stick tape on the front of the sticky-back foam and then fit the foam/felt piece into the space, pressing firmly so the tape would stick to the foam already in the space.

foam + felt; felt on the foam; tape on one side of the foam with felt on the other

Below I've added pins from our various trips. Some would fit better if the tray was oriented horizontally instead of vertically, but then some of the challenge coins wouldn't fit. I'll leave it alone for now.

I then added Mr M's challenge coins to the lower section. I need to figure out how to make them stay in place. Right now they're just setting on the dividers and the slightest bump will send them flying to the floor.

I'm missing some of the pins and coins we've collected, but I'm sure I'll find them as I sort through our bins of stuff to be scrapbooked. I'm super behind on our scrapbooks (I haven't done anything since Sunshine was tiny), but I'm determined to get caught up.

I'm happy with how this project turned out. It was a bit repetitious and tedious, but the end results look nice and we now have a way to display our souvenirs. And I'm finally using that printer's tray...