Recipe for...

... My Cool Craft Project!

Okay, in a recent post I mentioned that I'd spent a lot of time doing a craft, which I couldn't reveal at the time, because of the slim, minuscule, I'm talking minute chance that one of the people I was sending it to would happen to read my blog (The majority of my friends don't actually read blogs, including mine. I know! What's that about?). So my faithful readers all gave a collective sigh of disappointment, knowing that this excluded them from the candidate list. As mentioned before, I'm deeply sorry about that. Someday I'll make it up to you.

So anyway, the gifts have been sent and received, and now I can finally write about them. Permission granted to rejoice.

First off, you need to make friends worthy of the labor this project will entail. I'm warning you in advance, this may be a bit too much to take on for say, a ChemLawn Guy Appreciation Week gift.

I happen to have at least two people who fall into this category. They are both really smart, nice, and beautiful, and they have both gotten married in the past 10 months. So I wanted to make something special for these dear friends, and thanks to my darling sister Kirsten, who is one of the most crafty, scrappy, creative and artsy persons on planet earth, I was able to send them some really cool...

Photo Puzzles!!!!

INGREDIENTS:

• Image editing software (Photoshop, Elements, etc)
• Six pictures, printed to 4x4 size
• Nine 1.5" inch plain wood blocks (from a craft store, such as Michael's. Mine were $.33 a block)
• Matte Modge Podge (it's like runny Elmer's white glue. Non-toxic, harmless, amazing stuff. Available at Walmart, craft stores etc.)

Optional (for base unit)

• One 5x5 picture frame (mine was $3.50 at Ben Franklin)
• One 5x5 picture to go in the picture frame

DIRECTIONS:
This is how I did it, but of course you can improvise and do it any way you like.

First off, kiss up to Kirsten, cause it'll just look cool at the end if you do. She'd already made a set of these for her moms for Mother's Day. Her style is so cute, and I loved the boarders that she put around each image. I thought it would be a quick thing to just plop my images onto her templates and voila...ready to print.

I was wrong. Even though she'd already been through this, it took the better part of a Saturday to get these puppies ready for printing.

First, you need to imagine the image diced into ninths, and try to position it so you're not cutting right down someone's eyes, nose, etc. Tricky but worth the time.

After you save the six pictures as 4x4", you can be ultra cool and make a 5x5 of all of them together to put in the picture frame that serves as the Photo Puzzle base. For this part, we created a 5x5" document, and resized each of the 6 images to 1.5" to fit them all in the document. We put 3 on top and 3 on the bottom, and wrote the words "Happily Ever After" in the middle row. The fun fonts and colors Kirsten came up with are just perfect.

I'm all about doing things as affordably as possible...and if you are too, then try this. You can save all of these images side by side on one massive12x36 .jpeg file. At Costco they printed the whole gargantuan thing for about $5.00. Not all Costco's have the same print capabilities, so check with yours before uploading. Don't go by what their website says either...call the store directly and ask the photo lab personally (they don't advertise this size on their website. Alternatively, you can find a photo lab that will print your images any other way. So long as you have the final product in the right size, you're golden (eg: you could make the six images for the blocks all 4x6, and have 2" of white space on the side which you'd just cut out, and the frame image could be a 5x7 with the 2" of white cut off). MATTE FINISH Looks Best!

Okay, so at last you've got your prints. Now, put your kids to bed and then try to call Kirsten for some direction on what to do next. Have no luck reaching her. Stay up till 5:30 am cutting them into nine 1.5" squares with your exacto knife, (and be sure to be terrified that you might make a stupid mistake by just not thinking about something you should have realized).

After pondering and mulling for a while, decide that gluing the center image first, the top, bottom and side middle images next, and the corner images last would work best, to avoid having to trim parts of the picture that you just don't' want to cut off. I had to sacrifice bits of boarders here and there, but that didn't ruin the image). Since each block is slightly different, test lots of them out to make sure each picture is paired up with the block face that most closely matched it's size.

Then use Modge Podge and a paint brush to glue all the little pictures onto the nine wood blocks...one square from each of the six pictures per block of course.

Let the Modge Podge dry, and then put another coat on. I liked the texture made by painting the Modge Podge side to side first, and then the next coat up and down. Let them dry again...completely. While waiting, you can Windex the glass in the picture frame and put your 5x5 image in there.

Now that you're DONE, get excited to finally put the nine photo blocks in the base. Yelp aye carumba! when you discover that even though they all fit in before the Modge Podging took place, the blocks are now just a smidge too big to fit in the picture frame!

Get out your exacto blade again, and whittle the inside edges of the wood frame. Keep trying the blocks to see if it's enough. It's not. Whittle some more. It's still not. Finally, get some sand paper and sand down all four sides till they at last slide in and out freely.

Now go find a black Sharpie marker that isn't dried up. The one in the kitchen doesn't work, so throw it out for all that's holy. You don't need to hang onto dry markers. Next, check the office. Just purple and blue Sharpies. Look in the kid's crayon box...there's one at the bottom that still works (!) Color the part of the frame that you sanded, and sing Glory Hallelujah that the Sharpie marker is exactly the same color as the paint on the frame...so no one can tell that you've done this.

Finally, pick which picture you want to be facing, and assemble it in the glass. Sit and stare at your accomplishment with a silly grin on your face, gazing at it like it's a child you've just labored and given birth too...cause in reality, you've been up just as long with this project as you were with both of your kids' births.

When the sun comes up, take some photos of it, then wrap it up in pretty tissue paper and put a ribbon on it. Pop it in the mail and wait for the phone call. It will come.

Here are a couple images of the finished projects. S&S and C&C, I hope you enjoy these, and that someday your babies will slobber on the fun blocks that auntie Blue made for you to remember that happy day you became a new family! The Modge Podge is harmless...and there are several coats. Should be suckable for years to come!

♥