Buckley Mailbox

This project was inspired by the "Karl & Ellie" mailbox from our favorite Pixar movie, Up!  This was a fun adventure for my little family, since it involved paint coming in contact with Little J's skin.

I found a really inexpensive (but sadly, plastic) white mailbox on Amazon.  I was really bummed by just how plastic-y it looked in person, so I played with some spray paint and came up with a solution.  I used a combination of a pearlescent white paint and a very shiny clear coat spray.

Before my spray paint treatment

protecting the little red flag from spray paint

Once the paint was dry, we got to work choosing our handprint colors.  I tried to keep our color scheme as similar to the movie mailbox as possible.  I mixed our colors myself, using acrylic (water-based) paint.  I absolutely do not recommend using oil-based paint for this kind of project, because it cannot be easily washed off of skin with water (it will usually require paint thinner).  Since my little baby was involved in the paint process, it was especially important to have easy cleanup :)

After our handprints and fancy writing dried, I sprayed the whole thing one more time with my clear coat spray.  This will protect our paint job from getting rubbed off or chipped.

The final product:

My full "Up" Birthday Party can be found here!  Check it out!