It’s Not Too Late to Make a Homemade Gift – With Your Child!

Shadow Box for Children’s Art

My daughter and I have spent the last two days making homemade gifts and she and I both are so happy with the results, we don’t want to give away what we’ve made. First, we made a shadow box inspired by the scrap boxes of Darcy Miller. In addition, Miller has recently put together scrap boxes to commemorate a trip to Disney World and they are wonderfully inspiring as well. As usual, preschool girl was more than willing to color a picture for someone special, so I snapped a few photos of her while she created her masterpiece. I asked her to “sign” it and created a shadowbox with the art, picture of the artist and the media (crayons!).

The tools you need: shadow box, card stock, glue gun, artwork, picture of child during the creative process, ruler, scissors/paper cutter, spray adhesive (not pictured; I didn’t realize how handy it would be) and double-sided tape.

Begin by laying out your artwork and keepsakes to make sure you like the arrangement. Then place spray adhesive on the back of the artwork and mount it to the back of the shadowbox. Make sure to double check your placement of objects against any allowances for the frame. My frame required a 1/4″ space around the edge of the mounting space.

Then begin hot glueing the crayons in place. I tried removing several crayons and covering a four-inch square area with glue then placing the crayons on, but found the glue dried far too fast. I had much better luck placing a line of glue and adhering the crayons one at a time.

Next I selected card stock for the background of my photo and decided on the appropriate size. I cut the card stock and photo and used double-sided tape to affix them to one another. For added depth in the shadow box, I used “puffy” stickers available at craft stores to mount the image and backing to the crayons.

Finally, place the photo and reassemble the shadow box. Our artwork featured a Christmas picture and my daughter was sporting her holiday PJs, but you could tailor this project to any holiday by altering the artwork, color of crayons and photo composition. The possibilities are endless!

Kids’ Year of Growth Photo Albums

Next, we made photo albums that document a year of growth for my preschool girl and toddler boy. It’s amazing how much our children change over the course of a single year and I thought close family members would like a “year in photos”. I chose one photo of each child from each month and printed them at the local photo kiosk. You would think that would result in 24 photos, but I couldn’t choose just one for some months and ended up with 35 photos, and even that few was hard. In fact, I will say that choosing and labeling the photos are the most time-consuming parts of the job.

For this project, you’ll need: desired photos, card stock cut to size of photos (I used standard 4X6, but you could certainly get fancy), photos, hole punch (single hole punch works best), ribbon, labeling materials (markers, stickers, etc), and scissors.

My daughter is just learning to write and I asked her to print “Merry Christmas” on the covers for our albums. She looked at all the letters involved and said, (sigh) “Dat’s a wot of work!” So I did what any good mother would do, I bribed her with Hershey’s Kisses. I think she did a great job:

I began by labeling the back of each photo with the name, month and age of each child. Then assemble the photos in the order you wish and begin punching holes. It is important to line up the holes throughout the entire stack of photos. Then feed your ribbon through and tie. I found it helpful to feed the ribbon through a small stack of photos at a time.

I’ve made these photo albums as keepsakes for birthday parties, to capture a holiday season and for friends’ when I accumulate a number of photos of them or their children. Because you and your child create the cover, this is a really special item to place in a keepsake box as well.