Monday, February 26, 2007

Alphabet Blocks

A while ago I bought a bunch of unfinished wooden blocks, intending to create something out of them.
Well yesterday I took them out and played with them a bit. I remember as a child, playing with wooden blocks with pictures on them...I think they were farm animals. And then of course there were the wooden alphabet blocks we all played with. (Before the age of legos. :-)

So I used the 2" cubes as a base for little 2" simple collages. First I sanded down the sharp edges to make them look old and worn. And then I stained them using one of those distress ink pads by Jim Holtz.

While they were drying a little I chose some papers from Basic Grey and Cosmo Cricket and cut out some 2' squares. I used these as backgrounds for little collages. On some of the block faces I used plain graphics, some have a simple letters that I printed on my inkjet and cut out, and some are odd little juxtapositions of images.

They're not quite finished. I want to sand the paper edges to integrate it into the wood, then stain them again and seal the surfaces with Modge Podge Hard Coat. Its supposed to dry harder than regular Modge Podge. I don't want the blocks to stay tacky or they'll stick to each other.

Making these is like eating popcorn! I can't stop. I keep wanting to take it in another direction...and I have lots of blocks. Wouldn't this be a fun project for a trade?
I'm off to suggest it at my Paper Traders group. Anyone want to join us? You can apply here!

1 comment:

Gisele said...

Charlene what a great idea...these blocks are beautiful!