My niece Gia turns 1 tomorrow and we celebrated her birthday this weekend. As her Aunt/Personal Photographer, I've taken a growth picture of her every month since she was born. And that wasn't always easy, since I moved in the middle of the year and my camera was packed for about 2 months!
For her party I was excited to find a fun way to display her photos - it's pretty amazing to see how she's grown! So I found this inspiration picture on Pinterest.
This is one of those projects that looks simple to put together, but really is several little projects in one.
For this project you'll need:
a frame (I would have loved an old window with more character, but I ended up just using a frame I had)
photos
numbers - which were harder to find than I expected. I found these at Michael's
tiny clothes pins (12)
glue dots (or your preferred sticking method)
felt for flowers (whatever color(s) you want)
felt for leaves - I really wanted to find a moss green color for my leaves, but I looked at Hobby Lobby and Michael's and they just have deep forest green, normal green and lime green)
ribbon - I used pink ribbon to hang the numbers/photos and green ribbon for the flower garland
tape
hot glue gun
scissors
To make the flowers I first cut a circle. For the large flowers, I used a whole sheet of felt and just cut as large a circle as possible. You can use anything as a template - a bowl, CD, cup, etc.
Then I spiral cut the circle, freehand with a wavy cut. Leaving a small circle at the center.
Then I started from the outside of the circle and wrapped it around each other. You're supposed to hot glue as you go, but I was doing it while watching TV and just wrapped them without gluing. They stayed together fine and then I hot glued them later, just some of the outside layers and the circle to the bottom.
I cut leaves freehand. It's ok if they have a non-uniform, organic shape!
To put everything together, I laid everything out.
I cut 3 strands of the pink ribbon to be a couple inches longer than the edge of the frame.
Then I used glue dots to stick the numbers to the corresponding pictures.
Then I used the clothes pins to pin the numbers to the ribbon. Then taped the ribbon to the edge of the frame.
Then I hung the frame on the wall so I could create the flower garland on the frame. I cut a long strip of green ribbon and taped it to the frame.
Then, using hot glue, I added placed flowers and leaves on the garland. And, of course, burned my fingers because I have a super hot mini glue gun.
I was excited with how it turned out!