Countdown To Disney

What happens when you can’t find your Countdown? You make a new one!

We had a big Disney milestone in the past week. We hit the 60 day mark! Why is it so important? If you stay on Disney property, you get to choose your Fastpasses. I’m not sure if it’s the same for everyone, but the excitement and anticipation really rises in our house once we book our fastpasses. After months of planning, booking fastpasses make our vacation seem close. And since we’re excited, this is also when we start officially counting down to our vacation.

I know I have a Countdown around here somewhere, but since I couldn’t find it, I decided to make a new one. And if that’s even possible, I think I like this one better than my the one that’s hidden in my house somewhere.

It’s not possible to go to Disney and NOT ride the Monorail. So, I knew that it was just the thing that I needed to make my new Countdown. Who doesn’t like the Monorail, right?

Supplies:

• Thick Chipboard
• Mod Podge
• Scrap Paper
• Laminator
• Velcro
• Numbers / Letters (Stickers or cut with a Cricut)
• Ribbon

Finding pictures of monorails was easy, but finding ones that would work for my DIY project proved to be a little harder than I thought they’d be. Of course everyone is entitled to getting credit for their work, but the pictures I found online that I wanted to use had watermarks and other designs in the way. Finally, I found this lovely picture of the front half of a monorail. It’s pretty realistic, too.

In order to get a “full” Monorail, I had to Duplicate the image, flip it, and attach the 2 sides together in my Cricut Design Space. Ahhh…perfect!

I printed out the image on my printer, cut it out on my Cricut, and laminated it for stability. It’s so cute!

I originally planned on doing a 14 day Countdown, but after thinking about it more, I decided that 2 weeks didn’t seem like enough time. I wanted to make it longer. But, the chipboard is only 12″ x 12″, so I needed to rethink how I was going to add more days without making it seem too crowded.

That’s when I decided on an 8 week Countdown. We will move the Monorail once a week for 7 weeks and then the week leading up to our vacation, we will move the monorail every day. I hate to admit it, but sometimes we would forget to change the dates for a day or 2 on our old Countdown, so I think this will work out a lot better.

I painted the sides of the chipboard to give it a finished look. It probably wouldn’t bother anyone else, but when I get started on a project, I want to do it “perfect”. Please tell me I’m not the only one. 🙂

Once the paint dried, I painted on a layer of Mod Podge on the chipboard and placed the Scrapbook paper on top. I, then, placed another layer of Mod Podge on top. I should have waited for the bottom to dry because the paper started to bubble up in 2 areas. Again, my need for things to be “perfect” caused me to panic. I considered ripping the paper off and starting over again, but I’m glad I waited. As the Mod Podge dried, the bubbles went down enough for me realize that once I put the other items on, you probably wouldn’t even notice. PHEW!

I glued everything onto the countdown and went over it again with another layer of Mod Podge so they wouldn’t accidentally get torn off. The last part of the project was placing the velcro and placing our Monorail on Week 8. Voila!!

We’re so excited!

What do you use for your Countdown to Disney?