Erica From the Block

Or maybe it’s more, Erica with the blocks….

I’ll explain.

This past Saturday, I got to spend most of the day “crafting” with a college friend who recently moved back to Minnesota with her husband. Erica was a basketball teammate of mine in college and even though we only played one year together (I was a senior when she was a freshman), we did have fun together so I was excited when I learned she was moving closer. And even though we hadn’t seen each other in four years, it was just like old times but better! We chatted all day on just about everything and even commiserated about our husbands’ lack of adulation when it comes to our endless projects. It was fabulous! We are planning on doing more crafting at least monthly.

Love Bug was enamored as well. I had explained to her the night before about Erica visiting the next day. She was curious about who Erica was and, for lack of a better definition, I said, “She is my friend Erica. And she’s tall,” because, well, you guessed it, she’s tall. So the whole day, Bug kept commenting on Erica’s “longness” and asking to see how “long” she was. Erica was nothing but sweet about it.

Of course I did a fantastic job of taking pictures so bear with me.

As for our project, it was Erica’s brainchild and she had her dad do all the dirty work. After gluing and clamping 2x4s together in pairs, he cut them down to 3 inch x 3 inch x 3 inch cubes. (And from what I could tell, he was pretty much perfect in his cutting. Impressive!) From there, Erica and I were left with endless possibilities which would have crippled any less than professional crafters like us. : )

Erica shared a beautiful pad of themed paper which we cut up and adhered to the cubes using plain old glue sticks. Erica chose pumpkins.

I chose a basket of apples.

Doesn’t the pink carpet really set them off?

We sanded the edges just a bit to soften them up. Erica Modge Podged her pumpkins, I did not Modge Podge the apples. The apples already had a glossy sheen against the flat finish of green background and Modge Podge would have taken away that distinction.

I purposely set gaps with my blocks and applied the picture as such. This was kind of a ‘in progress’ shot because the ninth block was not yet decided. But after snapping this one, I decided the far right block in the second row was necessary.

Erica went on to do a cute snowman stack that included some onyx glitter, which I neglected to photograph up close. I did capture this beauty though. This is how we worked for the day. The black shimmery blocks are the snowman.

And this one.

What took me until Thursday to post about our day was the second side I was working on. My plan is to do up each side with some different kind of design so it can be a nine piece, six-sided design element in itself.