Secret Shop

The Wonderkid's school has a Secret Shop (think Secret Santa without the Santa) for the kids to purchase gifts for their family and friends.  I must say, this is a huge under taking and the woman in charge does an incredible job of buying through out the year.  She has some connections with the retail world and is able to get some fun stuff.  My only thought while looking at everything was, "think of all the stuff I could make for the kids to buy".  I know, it wasn't about me but...

I digress.  This is the first year the Secret Shop was in a new location.  I think it had been in the old location forever, a cute little cottage without a lot of space but very homey.  So, the folks that ran it knew what it looked like in the past and were having trouble picturing what it could look like in the new space.  I saw so many possibilities.  Unfortunately, I didn't have time to order any new vinyl so we went with what I had.  The blue snowflakes matched the table clothes nicely, the red actually looked a little out of place but I don't think folks noticed too much.

I used Winter Wonderland font for the lettering and cut the "S" out as large as I could on a 12 x 24 mat.  I made all the rest of them proportional.  I put the letters up at angles because I knew I wouldn't be able to make them perfectly straight (remember I had no time to order vinyl, I also didn't have a level and I didn't want to write on the walls) so they were obviously/purposely a kilter.  The snow flakes were cut from last year's seasonal cart, "When It's Cold Outside".  When the new seasonal came out I initially thought, I don't need that one.  I have When It's Cold Outside.  Then I started looking at the snowflakes closely and I realized a lot of them have an image hidden in them. I guess I didn't notice last year because I was so new to my cricut and I was cutting them at 2 inches instead of 12.  So, now I'm thinking I "need" to buy myself the new snowflake cart (or make some designs like Diane of Capadia Designs). 

Here is one more picture of the lettering.  I must say, if you are new to vinyl, this is not the font to cut at 24 inches.  The two sides of the letters did NOT want to lay down nicely.  However, I got it on the walls, eventually.

Here is the other side of the room.  As you can see, we were only using a portion of what we call the Community Center.  If you are a regular reader, you will remember when I started using shower curtains with vinyl.  It was when I created a banner for the Fall Festival.  You can see the post here.  Well, shower curtains to the rescue, again.  We wanted something to divide the room and keep the little ones in the correct area. I created a PVC pipe frame using 1 inch PVC pipe, 2 foot by 2 foot pieces of 1/2 inch press board (ply wood to some of you) and either T connectors or elbow connectors.  This really was an easy, inexpensive way to make this project work.

Here are a few of the snowflakes with the ribbons I used to tie them up.  I found ribbon that exactly matched the table clothes we had on each of the tables.  The table clothes were pink, green and blue.

More snowflakes.


When I started adding up what I spent, I used almost 20 sheets of vinyl, 7 shower curtains, 6 rolls of ribbon (bought with 40% off coupons from Michaels) about 10 PVC pipes cut to the appropriate lengths and 1 piece of press board.  The entire project (even with the vinyl) was about $100.  Everything is reusable, except for the lettering on the wall.  That will need to be recut next year. 

I have a ton of things I'm working on but I'm running out of time to get them posted.  I may be flooding folks right after Christmas.  I'll try to do pictures of all the baked goods I've been working on.  My cookie tins need to be mailed on Thursday.