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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Photo Block tutorial




































These are my belated Mother's day gifts to my mom and mother-in-law. You could do them for birthdays, Christmas, or just because though. What's great is there's a pic on each side of the picture blocks, so they can switch up which picture is showing, and there are four different quotes on the larger block about grandparents.
Namely: "Some of my greatest blessings call me Grandma"
"Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your kids"
"Grandchildren: the only people who can get more out of you than the IRS"
"No cowboy was ever quicker on the draw than a grandparent pulling a picture out of a wallet"
I just got one 4x4 from Home Depot, though it's really closer to 3.25x3.25 and used a circular saw (from my awesome neighbor again!) to cut it into the sizes I wanted.
Then I obviously sanded them.
I then spray painted them copper
























Then I painted them antique white with acryllic paint. Then I just distressed them with some sandpaper.
Next, I modpodged the pictures on. I wanted to make sure they were cropped the exact way I wanted them, so I cropped them and then dragged the images to a Word document and just printed them on normal paper (I printed them down at the local UPS store).
Then I slapped on some varnish, so the pics would be protected.
For the main block - I didn't think I could use the CitraSolv technique since it says it cleans paint off surfaces and I didn't want that! I also don't have a Silhouette machine. So, I searched blogland and found a post about using ModPodge. For some reason I can't find the one I used, but heres the link to another one: http://jaimelyn11.blogspot.com/2011/04/pottery-barn-inspire-image-transfer.html
This is what mine looked like partway through. Just make sure you don't rub too hard, or the ink will come off with the paper. Where that happened, I just took a permanent marker and filled it in.































My mother-in-law's only grandchildren are ours, but I know she'll have more; plus only 2 blocks would have looked odd, so on the other blocks I used the paper modpodge technique for this:























The other great thing is that you not only can change what picture is showing, but also how they're stacked. I only took one other picture of an alternative:




1 comment:

Carolyn said...

they are so darling, I love mine. thanks for your handmade gift.