Ok, so while I’ve been competing in paddleboard racing events for years now, it’s ONLY within the past year I’ve tried competing in surfing. I’m not a competitive person anymore- not like I was in high school, and that was in Science Team, Math Team, Quiz Bowl….anything within the realm of nerddom. Physically, I was a wuss, but academically, I was Zena, the Warrior Princess.
Amazing how the universe plays cruel tricks on you. Now I just want to be that Olympian I dreamed of. Well, for now, little by little, I’m happy with the small victories in my life. With much trepidation, I was convinced by some good friends to try some fun competitions to get over my fear of my surfing in front of others and taking off on waves instead of letting everyone else go ahead of me all the time and settling for leftovers. My friends are thankfully so observant and want me to improve. I couldn’t ask for better friends!
I already have some paddleboard trophies hanging on my personal wall in my craft room, away from public show- they’re beautiful carved works of art that hang flat on the wall, no matter the place on the trophy. However, I have collected some 3-D trophies from these new surfing competitions that are quite nice, but I really have no shelves to mount them on, and I don’t want them to pile up on me (isn’t that a wonderful problem to have?). Most of this kind have a nice gold plaque attached that display the event and place I came in during that event. So I thought, why not- remove those, and mount those on something that can hang on the wall, but more discreetly?
Here’s my take.
First, I took nice pictures of the trophies with everything intact, and you may want to include the date the event was held:

Put them in a digital photo album for future reminiscing. Next, get yourself a dull butter knife- I used one of those fancy mini butter knives (like we use them anyway), and used it to gently to pry up the little plaques by the corner:

Don’t crank too hard- just work slowly back and forth. You don’t want to bend the metal plate. If you do bend the metal plate, this can be fixed with lightly tapping it flat with a rubber mallet on a rubber block carefully.
Still prying up the nameplate….