LET THERE BE MUGS! So I have been a busy bee traveling the world and country to continue my collection of Starbucks City mugs - do you remember this post? Well my collection has grown considerably since then! I have friends and family on missions to get these for me where ever they go as well as my own travels and searches for these mugs.
Some people may say it's become a bit of an obsession (it is) BUT I am just very determined to have them all! Especially now that I have hit a major snag, this spring Starbucks rolled out a new style they are called the "You are Here" collection and well they are completely different AND this means they are no longer making the '08 Global Icon Series which is the one I am collecting =( This is the new style below. My friend brought it back from Atlanta - she searched for the other one but it was no where to be found. =(
NOW I do like this style but I am 33 mugs into the previous style. That was a lot of traveling (blood, sweat and tears) to a lot of Starbucks - and the thought of starting over is daunting. And perhaps some overkill as soon my apartment will be overrun by MUGS!(they are pretty though).
I am going to try to get what I can of the older style as they can still be found (with some serious digging and harassing of Starbucks employees) in certain locations (less busy areas) basically whatever is left is out there and once they are sold there will be no more new shipments.
I was able to snag a Florida mug in April and my friend was able to get a Miami mug for me in May. But it is getting harder and harder to find US mugs at this time. I need help! if I am going to get them all!!! Please help! If you see one snag it up! They still haven't moved over to the new design in Europe or other countries. (Hello oversea's friends - I miss you please help me). Too bad I have no travel plans at the moment but this seems like a good reason to make some!? I did find a Facebook group of similar collectors where trading goes on - however I don't have any duplicates to trade (who knew!) so I am also hunting for duplicates to trade. I know, serious First World Problems here =/
OKOK - onto the DIY part of this post - With the influx of new mugs my little shelves were quickly filled up.
SO I had to make more!! Now I have to say it did take me a long time (like 6 months- yes I don't make decisions so fast, also the creative process takes time) to come up with the perfect solution to house my precious collection. I knew that I wanted to place them atop the kitchen cabinets - being as there was unused open space there (and I had no where else to put them!). But I had to figure out how to make that happen with my resources (lack of cabinetry skills/tools/space) and a limited budget, of course. I did some sketches and came up with this idea here
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| via bridgewoodplace.etsy.com |
SO off to Home Depot I went with my sketchbook, tape measure and a calculator. After of course I measured the space - another challenge - the ceiling is not exactly even - so I needed to account for that in my measurements and make sure the shelves fell slightly below and weren't so tight that the shelf wouldn't fit. I decided on 12"L x 6" h x 13.5" wide for the shelves and then just hoped for the best! The overall height of the space was about 14" and varied slightly on either side. I would be stacking two shelves for a total height of 12" the 2" variance I figured would suffice.
I decided to go with Pine wood just because that was the best option as far as available wood sizes and I wanted real wood - not plywood because you will see the grain on the edges. I had a very patient Home Depot employee cut all the pieces for me - they are supposed to charge .25 a cut but he was super nice and only charged me like $3.00 for everything!! The large pieces of Pine (they had about 12" w it was really 11-7/8" x 8ft and 10ft long) so there was def. some fudging and not exact measurements here but I had accounted for that and again just hoped it would all work out in the end. Since I was going smaller and not larger my chances were better. The large wood pieces ranged from $10-16 and I needed a few to get all my pieces. Overall the wood cost me about $75. A far cry from the over $500 for above! So I was happy.
Then the constructing of the boxes began. I used some wood glue on the edges and a nail gun to put everything together. It was a little time consuming to build them all -but it was simple work.
I ended up stacking two layers of shelves (I lined them up the cabinet doors) and then because of the uneven ceiling the shelves didn't work vertically so instead I alternated with only one shelf to add a little interest.
I made one large shelf above the refrigerator for cookbooks. So once the boxes were built I did a rough sand around the edges and then stained them a darker stain. This is where using real wood really shows you can see the wood grain come out in the stain. I did two light coats of stain and then put them up. These aren't high traffic items since they are so high up and just for show really, so I didn't add a poly coating over the stain and I like the matte look. SO then I just placed them above the cabinets and arranged my mugs!
I put only one level on the opposite side because the ceiling was even lower there and the 2nd level didn't fit. The shelves are by no means perfect - but that adds to the charm and they only need to house one or two mugs and they do the job! What do you think?
I def. have room for more now! SO I must continue the search for as long as I have until they are all long gone. Ebay is already flooded with these mugs I saw a Cleveland mug up to $60 and Sacramento is at $128 right now - and I totally passed up getting that one on my cross country drive =/
I did get a new addition just the other day a friend brought back for me - but alas it is the new design. Hmmm now I have two of these - perhaps I am beginning another collection.....
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