Grammy's Birthday Present

Yesterday was my mom's birthday!  My mom is amazing.  She is not only a great mom, she is just about one of the best Grandma's I've ever seen.  She has 6 grandchildren.  3 are mine and 3 are my brothers. My brother and his family live pretty far away and I know my mom misses the girls and wishes she could see them more often.

So, one day when browsing Pinterest, I ran across this cute present someone made their grandpa.

Source: brassyapple.blogspot.com via Stevie on Pinterest

I knew this would be a great gift for Grammy. Especially when I realized that the word has 6 letters and Grammy has 6 grandchildren!  How often do things work out that nicely?

But then I remembered this craft I had also seen on Pinterest.

Source: shanty-2-chic.com via Stevie on Pinterest

I wanted to combine these two crafts.

Here's how I did mine.  I got a 1x8 piece of wood - the example above is a 2x8 but I thought my mom would probably want to hang hers.  I bought six 3.5x5 frames from the Dollar Store - kind of a golden colored wood. 

I painted them with a Terra Cotta acrylic paint that I had already.  I started to notice that the paint wasn't covering very well but it was kind of streaky and swirly and looked really pretty. I decided to paint the wood a goldish color to match.  First I painted the board with the Terra Cotta paint so that I could distress it with that color coming through.  Then I painted it the goldish color.  Then I distressed the board a bit and used some spray on Mod Podge to seal and protect it.

In the meantime, my brother and sister-in-law got letters from Michael's and took their pictures.  I already had the "A" and the "M" that I needed because I'm using them for something else I'm working on.  So I only needed a "G".  We decided to stop at Michael's for the letter on our way home from Mass on Sunday.  OF COURSE - no "G"'s.  None in the back - none anywhere.  UGGHH!!  So I ended up having to go out to another store and luckily they had it.  We all took our pictures and I edited them to be black and white.  Then I printed them out.  That ended up being another fiasco due to printer issues and the fact that CVS, Walgreens etc don't print 3.5x5 prints!!  But I ended up getting them printed out on my printer with photo paper.  At this point it was just seeming like one thing after another!!

But once I got them printed out and put into the frames, all that was left to do was to glue the frames onto the board.  My super wonderful hubby did that with his amazing super glue that dries super fast.

So here's how it turned out!

I think it turned out so cute!  I couldn't be happier with it.  I wish the picture was clearer but it was awfully hard to get a picture without a glare because of all the glass.  Hope you like it and I hope it can inspire you to make something for someone you love very much! 

The other most amazing grandmother I know, my mother-in-law, has a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks.  I already know what I want to do for her.  I'm off to get started on that and I can't wait to share it!!

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