I found this idea from a blogger whom I follow on a regular basis. She is an amazing, artistic woman! A lot of her ideas I don’t seem to touch, or wish I was “artsy” enough, but this one I decided to tackle! It looked fun, looked pretty easy, and thought the kids might enjoy it. Here is the blog I got it from. It’s called “Pink and Green Mama.” It is a blog to follow if you like to make crafts! http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/2011/01/homemade-recycled-calendar-mod-podge.html
If you want more clear directions on how to make these puzzles, than please go to her website! She does a much better job! I give all the credit to her blog for this idea, but I wish I had her talent and art ability!
I, of course, did not save any of our calendars from 2010. I recycled them quickly! I always get excited to put up a new calendar. It’s like a new start! I knew Michael’s had had some calendars for $1. I decided to check it out and see if they had any left. It was my lucky day! Not only did they have some, but they were $.50 a piece! Bonus!! I then looked for the cube blocks that she had used to make the cube puzzles. Michael’s did not have enough on hand, I need 9 of them. So, I decided to see what the Dollar Tree would have that would be cubed shape to use! Well, my luck again! They had these cubed toy puzzles that were a little bigger than I wanted them to be, but I knew they would still work. So I snagged some up to use.
Now, I don’t know if I would do this craft again as it was pretty tedious. And my kids really aren’t kids that get into puzzles, but I wanted to try it out anyway. But, if your kids like puzzles, than it’s worth a shot! So here is how I did this project.
I did find these flat squares and thought making two sided puzzles would be fun! I cut “perfect” squares and mod podged them to the wood pieces. This puzzle, I used 12 squares.
One side is a butterfly and the other side is a snail. You notice a little square of the same picture? That is from the back of the calendar that has all the pictures of the calendar. I cut those out and use them as the guide so the kids know what the picture is supposed to look like.
These are the blocks I found at the Dollar Tree. I then used 6 different pictures from the calendars. I made sure they were all different colors so it was easy to tell what picture you want to put together. This was the tedious part. Doing one side at a time and waiting for the mod podge to dry! But in the end, it turned out pretty cool!
These are just some pictures of my daughter enjoying the puzzles. The fourth picture is the blocks all done. On the top is a “map” of the six different pictures! I used my laminator. I just got one of those this summer and finally put it to use. I will have to say it will probably be something I use a bit more often now! Kind of fun!
Below, are some other puzzles I made. I cut out some pictures and used my laminator. Then I just cut them in to different shapes. They are smaller puzzles, but seem enough of a challenge for my daughter. I put them in individual baggies so we can just pull what one we want to put together out.
When my son got home from school, he got in on the fun too. He’s definitely not my puzzle kid! He did seem to enjoy these though!
Thank you Pink and Green Mama for the awesome idea! http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/
It’s fun to step out and do something different. I enjoyed making these for the kids, for the most part! It’s fun to see them getting into them and playing. Using those little minds!
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