Photo Holder Blocks

Remember me? No? Really? Sigh! Okay then, I'll refresh your memory, the gal in the Smokies who updates her blog every blue moon, yes, that one!

Well, seems as though everything comes to an end at once around here, school, soccer, scouts. Hey, I just noticed all our extracurricular activies start with an "S"!  Hmmm, you don't seem as excited about that as me. Okay, I'm a dork.

I talked my husband into holding the end of season soccer party at our house (eek!) and so I wanted to make a gift for each kid on our soccer team. I've been wanting to make photo blocks for quite some time so I sat down the morning of the party (because I just love giving myself plenty of time to do things . . . snort!) and started.

My dad had supplied me with the wood (I asked him to save me his scraps, and showed up at their house one day and he handed me this box, hammer not included):

So I took out 8 blocks and painted half of them blue, half of them red. Since our soccer party was on Memorial Day weekend, I wanted to keep it a red, white and blue theme to celebrate.

My husband shaped the wire holders for me. He put a dowel rod in his vice grip and wrapped the wire around it to make the circle part. I got a major eye roll from him when I mentioned we were crafting together and gee wasn't this fun! I should have taken more pictures, but I was in a hurry to get these done because someone gets ideas in her head to do stuff like this at the last minute (who, me?).

The wire thingies, well, yes, they stuck to the paper. Hubby then stuck them straight up in styrofoam for me to paint, dang that man is smart. It worked much better that way (can you picture it?).

After the blocks sorta dried I sanded the edges of them with really rough sand paper. Not only did this smooth the edges of the wood, it gave that rustic look I wanted.

Then I brought them back to hubs, batted my lashes and asked him to drill holes in the top for the wire holder part to stick into the wood (behind every crafter is a man with power tools).

Then I went inside to my craft table, and cut scrap paper squares the size of the blocks. I matted the patterned paper on solid paper to frame it, then cut a monogram with my cricut, glued that to the scrap paper square and modge podged the whole thing to the block. The girls got floral paper, the boys got stripes.

Here is my son holding the finished product:

Isn't he and it cute? The modge podge hadn't really dried all the way when I took that picture. Oops.

Each picture holder got an action shot front and back picture of the kids during their game.

Voila! Done! And everyone loved them!

Until next time!