Crafting

I love it...hubby hates it. Thankfully Pinterest has offered up some amazing suggestions of things I can spend time making that will actually be constantly used. I discovered this link, and my world has opened up in the way of personalized crafts! http://thatsmyletter.blogspot.ca/2011/08/p-is-for-personalize.html After figuring this out, every cute wooden craft I see, I know I could make myself, and for cheap! I started out with these two boards for our parents. After painting, and staining the wood itself, I used the iPad, to look up fonts online. The website will allow you to "test" out a phrase. When I find the style I like, I enlarge it to the size I need, and take a screen shot. I cover the iPad screen in a Ziploc bag, and trace the outline with a sharpie. I then arrange the words on the board, and tape them down. Using a ball point pen, I traced over the outline with as much pressure as possible, indenting the wood itself. I removed the plastic, and had faint dented lines to paint inside with acrylic.

I used a 2x4 for these next few. They were a little tougher, since the wood is harder than the pine I used for all the other boards...so indenting it to paint is trickier.

Wall Ruler. Another Pinterest find! I used the same idea as before; stained the board first, then googled Times New Roman Numbers to trace. To get all the lines as straight and accurate as possible, I used a measuring tape to pencil mark each inch, and taped them all off with painters tape to paint.

Look What I made! I spotted something similar on Etsy. I immediately thought it was such a cute idea, and knew I could put something like this to good use. Cameron, like most kids his age, loves to colour. He makes a new "picture" in Nursery every week, and is so excited to show us. We take it home, and a couple of hours later it makes its way to the garbage! So I made a board for each of the kids to hang artwork. It will get more use I'm sure when they hit school age, but for now, there is still always something hung there! I used the exact same process as before, and glued some little clothespins I found at Michaels.