Blocked!

I would LOVE to be writing about the Valentine's Day gift I built for my husband, but it was so overcast when we were outside playing with it, that no pictures turned out well. Ahhh well.. Guess that means we get to take it out again to play ;-)

You're gonna love it.

Instead, I want to tell you where I'm getting with the curtains.

Totally stickin' with my swoon-worthy cup inspiration that I talked about here.

I need to repeat the patterns on the curtain panels more times that I'll want to count, I'm sure, so my first thought was to create a stencil.

Um.. that idea was short-lived. If you know how stencils work, you'll see that there was no way all of those details can be replicated in a stencil. I'd have to put a big stencil with the outline, an inner stencil (perfectly spaced) inside most of them, and hope that nothing moved while I worked.

No thanks.

But stamps would do the trick!

I don't happen to have stamps... or a way to make stamps... But I do have plenty of wooden scraps, some Photoshop know-how, and elementary transferring techniques.

Oh, and a Dremel Trio...

The first thing I did was open the image of the cup in Photoshop, and basically make a coloring book-like image of the shapes from the cup. Then I cut scraps into sizes a little bigger than the images. There was no real precision here. Just put a piece of wood next to the shape, and marked about an inch over so I would know where to cut it.

Next, I traced over one of the shapes with a pencil (you can tell by the shiny marks in the photo).

Turned the paper over, placed the shape in the middle of the block, and colored over the outline of the shape (pressing firmly to transfer my pencil marks to the wood).

Ta da!

I marked the spots that were supposed to be removed with an "x", and took the block outside to work. I used my Dremel Trio's cutting bit (it's the one you would use as a jigsaw), and did a rough outline of the shape, and cut out the middle of the flower.

Finally, I used the straight routing bit to remove the rest of the wood, creating my block stencil! I also touched up some of the edges at this point.

Of course you have to test it, too (and if you have kids, THEY'RE gonna want to test it after you).

I just have a couple more to make, and then I can move on to the curtains. Can we say, "EXCITED!"?

If you want to make something like this, head on over to the Dremel Trio giveaway!