{ Get Your Craft On #1 - Beach Blocks }

One of my new years resolutions was to learn lots of new crafty skills, try and hand make a lot more kids presents rather than buy plastic crap for them and do a lot more crafty things on the Little Miss Emma blog - so here goes the first installment of a new regular series: Get Your Craft On!

Preparations for our upcoming trip to Papua New Guinea are in full swing this week here at Ythanbrae. Mr M is organising cattle and making sure the farm will keep ticking in our absence and I'm organising flights (still!!), travel insurance, thinking about whether I need to pack two pairs of bathers and generally dreaming of a warmer climate (in between caring for a sick little Monty, poor possum). As well as all these things I have been dreaming up little presents I can bring to LucyLu and Little Miss Sunshine - our friends gorgeous girls in PNG. Now I know my friend may be reading this so the surprise element has been lost but that's ok! I wanted to post this before we left and there are plenty more pressies stuffed in my suitcase :) 

So - you wanna make something that ends up looking like this??

I started with some raw MDF wooden blocks I purchased awhile ago on Etsy from Melanie A Stewart's store If Walls Could Talk. They are 1 x 1 inch, a bit smaller than I anticipated so probably not best for babies. Last week I was rummaging in the Yea op shop and found some vintage Golden Books and thought I could cut them up and put them to good use with a new lease of life. You can find some great Golden Books on ebay in bulk lots also. I decided to use 'Beach Day' as LucyLu and Little Miss Sunshine I'm sure are missing the Aussie beach they used to frequent (they now live inland in PNG).

  

I first cut up 1 x 1 inch squares from the pages of the book using my guillotine - I would suggest cutting just 1mm smaller than you need as I had to fold over some edges and glue down. You can be totally random in your squares or pick out sections you would like to display. I tried to pick out some little details like seagulls, faces, seashells, water splashing, palm trees and sailboats. I also cut up the text to display certain words like 'mermaid', 'waves', 'mama', 'daddy', 'beach', 'sand' and generally any adjectives or verbs. 

 

   

Using a good quality craft PVA glue and a small flat brush I painted the blocks with glue and stuck on the little squares of cut up pages. It was actually quite methodical and rhythmic, I did it sitting in front of the TV on the floor at the coffee table, trying to get Tessa to not stick her little wet puppy nose in craft glue.

After all the sides were covered I mixed up a decoupage mix of 3 parts glue to one part water and gave each block several coats. This makes the paper not so paper-like, it hardens and gives a nice gloss the more coats you give. I then sprayed them with a fixative that I just happened to have but you can skip that part if you like.

Using a cut-off piece of fabric I had floating about I made a very simple, two seam bag (great project for beginner sewer) and used a piece of white grosgrain ribbon to create a drawstring. If you would like a tutorial on how to sew a drawstring bag I found a great one here over at bunnybum (great blog I've now discovered too!)

Pop the finished blocks inside and you've got a very simple, quick, affordable gift to give to a lucky little person! I definitely want to make some more, probably bigger ones, using scrapbooking papers. You can print numbers and letters out and stick them on, or make a puzzle with some strategic cutting of papers for older children to put together. The possibilities are endless!

I hope you liked the first installment of Get Your Craft On - if you have any suggestions as to some other craft projects I could feature don't be shy :) I'm off to finish some other pressies and some of those jobs-to-do-before-you-go-on-holidays.

Have a lovely day xx