Wednesday, January 15, 2014

DIY Road Table With Homemade Wooden Trees

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I wanted our light table to become a creative hub for the boys, hoping to spark hours and hours of play.  The light table itself gets used for hours a day, but it's always nice to change things up.  So now our light table is now equipped with some interchangeable tabletops, including this homemade light bright tabletop.  Of course, I didn't stop there.  I just had to make a road map for the boys to drive their cars on.

DIY road table with homemade wooden trees from And Next Comes L

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This road tabletop is also made from 1/4" thick hardboard.  I drew the roads by tracing the width of a level, but you could certainly use whatever you had on hand.  Once I drew my rough road map in pencil, I started painting it with acrylic paint.  After the paint dried, I applied two coats of Mod Podge to seal and protect the roads from future damage.  I finished this project in an afternoon so it is a pretty simple and straightforward project.  And the end result is fabulous!

DIY road table from And Next Comes L

Closeup of DIY road table from And Next Comes L

Of course, a road table needs accessories, like the plastic grass we used as part of the frog pond small world.

Grass on DIY road table from And Next Comes L

But wait.  It needs trees!  I found this DIY Forest tutorial from Inspired by Charm on Pinterest shortly before Christmas and just knew that I had to make a set for the boys to play with.  I chose to stick with earth tones - think shades of green and brown.  They were ridiculously easy to make and the boys love them.  They will be a great addition to all sorts of small world play.

Homemade wooden trees for DIY road table or small world play from And Next Comes L

Homemade wooden trees for DIY road table or small world play from And Next Comes L

Homemade wooden trees for DIY road table or small world play from And Next Comes L

Of course, any good road map will need some cars for driving with, but what about some houses?  No problem!  J built some little houses for our town using our colorful Melissa & Doug wood blocks.  They work great, but I do have plans for some future accessories for this tabletop...just saying.

Block houses and cars on DIY road table from And Next Comes L

Block houses, cars, and homemade wooden trees on DIY road table from And Next Comes L

Since this tabletop fits on top of our light table, I can just remove it when we want to do some light play.  And since this tabletop is only 1/4" thick, I can easily store it under our couch in the playroom.

Be sure to check out the other interchangeable tabletops for our light table:


DIY road table with homemade wooden trees from And Next Comes L