Thursday, April 3, 2014

Anne's Picture Display

Last May we blessed Anne (I still can't believe she is a year old!). I made her blessing dress along with a few table decorations. They didn't really turn out the way I wanted them to, so I didn't do a blog post for them like I had originally planned. But I loved the pictures and saying I put with them, so I held onto them until I could figure out what to do with them. And a finally figured it out. One day I was getting her dressed and looked at the opposite wall, her big, empty, white, boring wall. And I just knew what I was going to do!

I started out with two random pieces of styrofoam we had been holding on to (I don't know why, but I'm glad!), some white felt I had left over from Christmas, and a yard or so of material that I had left over from when I made my nursing cover. I only used about half of it.

I ironed the material, I didn't want it to be all wrinkly. I used the felt to add some padding and thickness to the display and it worked perfectly!

I started out by laying the styrofoam on the felt and I cut around it about two inches out. One inch probably would have worked better.

Then I just kind of wrapped it around the back like a present. I used a cool temp glue gun (and glued like crazy) to keep it in place. I pulled it tight so there wasn't any loose material all bunched up and sagging in the front.

Then I did the same thing with the material. Being sure to keep it tight and gluing like crazy to keep it all in place.

And this is where I need to apologize. I meant to take really good pictures at each step, but when I got to this point I just kind of got lost in the project. So just pretend that I show a picture of the front of this perfectly stretched and padded piece of styrofoam.

Next I got some ribbon and kind of did a criss-cross pattern with it. You've seen it before for the picture display boards.
I just glued one end in place, then glued it onto the other side, pulling to make it snug, I didn't want it loose at all. I did that with the whole board. I used two different ribbon widths.
(And this is where I would have, should have showed you a picture of the front with the completed ribbon work.)

Next, the star of the show. These are the center pieces that I made and used for the lunch after Anne's blessing. They are in sad shape after being stored for almost a year, but really they don't look much different from when they first went into storage. Understand now why I didn't blog about it? I used the wrong wire so they were super flimsy.

For this project I just wanted the pictures and the sayings that are on the back side of the pinwheel thingy. So I very carefully ripped the paper away from the pictures (they were glued on pretty good, I didn't want them falling off back when I put them together).

Then the fun part! I played with the layout, trying to find the perfect place for each picture and saying. I added accessories and accent things to fill it in and make it fun. I used some of those gem pebble things, some frog push pins and made a few bows. Then I glued everything down so nothing would fall off. I used the cool temp glue for the material and ribbon. And I used E6000 to glue down the pictures and accent things. I didn't want bumps under the pictures and I didn't want to see glue through the stones and E6000 dries clear and flat and it is strong!

Then to hang it up I just glued on a little loop of ribbon to the back. One in the middle of the little one and two evenly spaced on the big one.

Each of the sayings that I chose to use were little tidbits of advice that I wanted to give her that would hopefully help her as she grew older, just said in a sweet way. So last year when I made these I knew I wanted to keep them and use them for something that she could see every day to help her remember and I think I have succeeded in that goal.



1 comment:

  1. You always have such clever ideas on your blog. This looks like one more.

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