Christmas Countdown Blocks!

My inspiration for this comes from Infarrantly Creative. It was a similar 2x4 chalkboard idea, but it had space to write on both sides and in the middle said "days until" so that you could write the number on the left and the event on the right.  

Don't you love projects that start with one person's great idea and then your own creativity picks up and morphs it into something very different from the original?  That's exactly what happened with this project.

I made these 2 sets of blocks for friends of mine, and I think I might have to make another for myself!  Honestly, when I started these I had NO idea where I was going with it.  At first I was thinking cutesy-Christmas to use this cute Christmasy ribbon I have stashed away.

BUT then I thought how lovely it'd be to use something from The Graphics Fairy.  I'm SO envious of all the other crafts made with Karen's beautiful images, and I wanted so badly to join the cool kids in that club!!

Here's the other one I made:

First I sanded my blocks (and probably should have primed them...but I didn't.)  Then I spray painted the front faces with chalkboard paint, about 2 coats.  When that was dry, I painted the rest of the block with green acrylic paint.  After I decided that the blocks were going to be vintage-y in style I sanded the edges of the blocks.

I took graphics and lettering and resizing everything in Word, and printed it onto cream cardstock.  I mod podged the wording and images onto the blocks (adding the strip of music to the bottom of the lettering.)  I cut my old violin sheet music into strips (that I found at a garage sale this summer... a whole book of it for 25 cents!) and mod podged  it around the edges.

All that was left was a little embellishing.  I added purple-ish pearls to the top one, slightly larger red ones to the bottom block.  Lastly I tied on some raffia and stuck it down with some glue dots!

Thanks for checking these out!   I had a lot of fun making them!


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Brag Monday @ The Graphics Fairy