How to make a shadowbox frame bank

This idea was inspired by a few different things. 1) This idea to turn a shadowbox frame into a bank. 2) I remember some charity coin donation box on the counter of a Dairy Queen where the goal was to land a coin in a shot glass. Unimportant detail: it was also full of water. Anyone remember those? 3) And though this didn’t really come into play, I was thinking about those faux pinball-like games for kids where a disc or ball rolls down ramps into a slot. (Like I said, that really didn’t show up in this final product, but maybe an idea to save for a future project.)

I started with a small, but deep shadowbox I picked up a couple years ago at IKEA. The closest IKEA is six hours away, so I was hoarding the shadowbox until I figured out an idea worthy enough to use it on. I don’t even know if IKEA still makes these. I hope they do because small, deep shadowboxes are remarkably hard to find!

The glass in this shadowbox can’t be taken out, so I masked off both sides with sticky notes before painting.

I painted the inside white and the outside with a thin coat of brown so it kind of looks like stain.

I like how the brushstrokes blend with the wood grain.

Next up was creating a coin slot. I wanted it to be large enough for folded bills. With pencil, I drew a small line on the top of my box and drilled a series of holes along the line. (Sorry, no photos.) Trust me, this looked really raggedy, but I couldn’t think of any other way to do it. Then I took it to my dad and he filed it down. I would have done it myself, but I presented him my problem, asking him for a tool and he kind of just took over.

Then I took two small jars that I had, washed them really well and polished them up. One of the jars was from a pesto, but I saved the other one so long ago I can’t remember what it’s from. Probably something from Trader Joe’s because they put a lot of their condiments in cute jars. I glued them to the bottom of the shadowbox with hot glue so they wouldn’t slosh around and break the glass.

Using the back of the frame as a template, I cut a piece of scrapbook paper to size. I love this pattern; it reminds me of a money tree! Or some type of financial institution logo, at least. Either way, fitting for a bank. I took an extra step and covered the paper in clear Con-Tact paper. Money is dirty, and I wanted to be able to wipe off the backing if it gets too grimy. Then I popped in the paper and the backing and I was done!

I thought Elise was still too young to understand how to put the coins in, but I let her try and she did great! I was careful only to give her one coin at a time (so I could keep track of them), but she understood how to put them in the slot right away and even pointed at them through the glass. Sometimes I underestimate what she’s capable of!

It’s nice for kids (especially really young ones) to be able to see the money through the glass. And the “game” aspect of it is just extra incentive to save those pennies. When it gets too full, you can just pull off the back, empty it out and buy a treat! (Or, ummm… make a deposit into your college fund.)

It’s surprisingly easy to get the coins to land in the jars. They all seem to hit the mouth of one of the jars just right and bounce into one of the two. I actually had to try to get them to fall otherwise. Elise had a bit of a harder time making the target, but she wasn’t really dropping them with much precision.