the thumb tacks came in!!! this took me like 5 hours and my back hurt so much afterward lol. still a wip because i didn't get everything up that i wanted to, plus i have more stuff coming in a few weeks and i forgot to leave space for those so i'm gonna have to rearrange everything anyway 😭
i got a pack of standard thumb tacks and a tin of map pins; i'd planned on using the thumb tacks as feet to have items sit on top of and lean against the board, but turns out hardly any of my items are flat or stiff enough to make that work. the map pins were going to be for things i didn't mind putting holes in (home-printed stuff like the shu dialogue screenshot) but i ended up using them to secure the edges of pretty much everything. the thumb tacks only got used on the largest items that needed stronger security (the hanging bromides, the clearfile, etc).
finally have a real shurei shrine happening.... i'm not too keen on the composition of this arrangement though, so i'll see what i can figure out once my next batch of goods arrive.
on an atrociously long list of problems i encountered, a major one was that some of the paper items didn't sit flat, even though i made sure none of the pins were pressing the corners down (all items are secured by their own weight resting against the pins)
so that was just warping in the paper i guess. this effect was at its worst with reiji's ticket because of how he'd been displayed previously, so i cut a piece of chipboard to serve as a firm backing. i made it a couple millimeters short on each side so it wouldn't be visible on the edges.
i attached him with my weakest washi tape so he can be peeled off cleanly and easily if needed; i later placed more rolls of tape on the center of each edge to hold down the spots that were warping outward. this idea ended up working fairly well so i made more backings for other items, especially large and thin ones like the gift drawings and the epsi clearfile. though the chipboard turned out to be thin enough itself to bend a bit too... so i might have to find something even stiffer to protect the items from long-term warping :/
my next catastrophic event was when i was hanging up my little guitar keychain and accidentally dropped it into the abyss behind the wall.... it was a whole 20 minute project to rescue the poor thing, which involved taking the board down entirely and knocking a bunch of items out of alignment 😭 i've now installed preventative measures so anything else that falls will be caught by a safety net. PHEW! glad that the first thing to fall was an easily-cleaned and hard-to-damage metal keychain, and not one of my precious pieces of imported paper.
and speaking of, the felix miroir card is my #1 enemy now. he'd been in a side loader and a plastic sleeve ever since i received him from a trade, and i made the debatable decision to unsleeve everything for the board because i didn't like the reflectiveness and the way it effected the true colors of the items. however, felix's sleeve (which was a long sleeve suitable for bookmarks, folded over for him) was such a snug fit that it was really difficult to get him out of there safely... this man was so stubborn that he straight up broke open the edge of the sleeve instead of just coming out peacefully. in the interest of avoiding further damage to his previously immaculate corners, i just tore the edge of the sleeve the rest of the way down with a pen tip to free him. and THEN he decided to be the only item to fully tumble out of his pins while i was moving the board during the keychain rescue operation. he still looks perfect from a distance, but if you were to inspect him very closely you'd see some small inconsistencies along his edges. that's what i get for unsleeving a nobleman i guess 🙄
as for the fire emblem section...
feeling much better about it this time, though i'm kinda mad the byleth cards ended up misaligned bc i'd originally had them centered over the steelcase, but then i shuffled things around on the shelf and shifted the board and just didn't feel like fixing the cards lol. i'm getting a claude card in my next order anyway, so i'll rearrange them then.
i set up the desk calendar and its sleeve as a little stage way too far in advance so now i'm like. this is where i'd put my linleth acrylics. IF I HAD THEM! the calendar should make for nice backgrounds (it has the monthly murals from fe3h on the reverse side of the calendar months), but i'll need to stuff the sleeve with something so the weight of the acrylics don't bend it.
i might remove the sound selection disc case since it sticks out weirdly and makes for the fourth crest of flames in a very small space, but i also kinda like having a "floor" for the whole section. big ol' memo claude is also a pain to find a decent spot for. i might grab the byleth and sothis memo pads in the future so i can have them all lined up somewhere.
my favorite decision was reappropriating the ridiculous friction album as a stage for shurei. when i have the ceiling light on, it reflects pink light like this (slightly more conspicuous irl)
this stupid thing delights me so much that i took a bunch of pictures playing with it :') below is all lights off except the string lights, and then shining my lamp at an angle to catch the album
the effect works best with a phone flashlight, so i got my sister to take these pics of the album's reflective properties at its maximum potential while i held my phone
makes me want to set up a dedicated light for it LOL.
i wish i could flip the album around to hide the open side, but to get the text on the closed side to be right-side-up i'd have to have the back of the album with the tracklist facing up. i also want to get something to sit behind shurei as a background.... for these two i might just home-print a fancy dinner party type of thing lol, and once i get the og stage outfit shurei acrylics i'll give them the friction album floor and a stage background. as for poor lonely rio... i'll think of something 😭
that's that for now, i think!! will be back at it again once my next order shows up. janus reiji and lrfes shu tickets are definitely getting first choice of board real estate
