of Creating Fun Family Plaques

I'll apologize right now for the lack of process shots regarding this project. Sometimes while I'm doing craft project I kind of space out and forget that I want to post them later. This discouraging thought is totally made up for by the fact that these little babies turned out beautiful. It all started when I stumbled across this post and decided it would be perfect for my family members for Christmas given a few tweaks. My sister Mandy aka my crafting benefactor agreed and so we set to work getting all of the necessary supplies. I basically followed the same directions as the above post but switched a few things up to make them uniquely ours. We ended up making like 10 of these for various family members and the results are beautiful. Mandy was in charge of choosing the pictures we used and I was in charge of the rest. She's much better at choosing those than I am and I happen to be better with general crafts.

If you are reading this and are a family member, we probably have yours in some state of completeness at my parents house. Sadly we kind of forgot about the pictures until we had already gone through most of the craft and it was time for Mandy to go home. It may be more of an Easter gift at this point.

Today's Cast of Characters:

Wood stain is kind of the star of the show today with it creating whatever mood you like. I choose to use Early American because that's what the post said and I like the rustic look but you can make these to match any sort of decor. I think it would look good with light or dark wood stain as well. You will also need some old tee shirts, some hot glue, and wood. It can be scrap or pallette wood too but we got ours from home depot and had them cut it into 15 inch sections to help us on our way. You also need to get some binder clips, furniture nails and embellishments. My mom has a giant collection of old buttons so it was pretty easy to choose some. Also, the above post mentions printing out the graphic on white card stock so that is what we did. I'm sure it would be fine if you mod podged a regular piece of computer paper too but it would add an extra step.

What to Do:

First sand and stain your wood. Pretty simple when you do it right. My grandfather used his planer and my sisters Mandy and Jenny and I used bunched up old t shirts and rubbed on the stain. We then let it dry.

While I was back at work the Monday before Christmas, my brother in law Larry and my Papa created a way to hold up the plaques. Papa used old wire from his parent's old studio. I think that added something even more family esque to the proceedings.

Next print and cut out your signs. I used similar font choices as the tutorial above but I made the sign say something a little more gender neutral. Our plan is to eventually find an old and new picture of each family we are giving the plaques to. I felt like the slogan I chose kind of goes with this theme If you already have these, print and cut them out too.

Its time to get to crafting! Use the furniture tacks to nail on the sign. After doing this I probably would recommend mod podging it because the paper does some crazy stuff. After the mod podge is dry then add your furniture tacks.

Next hot glue on the embellishments to your binder clips. Let them dry and then hot glue them on to your plaque. I used two per plaque because I wanted to be able to have two 4x6 pictures but if you dont mind a little randomness feel free to add as many clips as you want.

Our next step is sadly not complete for me yet. Mandy and I are working on finding the pics so I will update when that is finished. But for now, if you have your pictures add them to the clips and your plaque is ready to share or enjoy!