Wooden Photo Blocks

I received a request to show how I made these photo blocks:

I thought this would be a good time to share (christmas gifts?). Please forgive my tutorial skills! It is very possible that there is a different/better method for making these, but this is how I made mine.  I got my pre-cut and sanded wooden blocks at a local scrapbook store all ready to use. Then my Mom requested some grandbaby blocks but the scrapbook store had gone out of business. My step-Dad bought a piece of wood that was 3.5" square and 8 feet long (we didn't need that much for 6 blocks). He used a neighbors table saw to cut them in to 3.5" blocks. Then he sanded them and gave them to me for the decorating part.

Selecting which photos to use was the hardest part for me. Once I was able to narrow it down to 4 pics of the older kids and 1 or 2 of the babies (we will add more as they get older), I resized each photo to 3.25"x3.25" and placed them all on one 12x12 sheet in PhotoshopElements and had them printed at Costco. There is also a great website that prints MANY different sizes of photos (3x3, 4x4, etc) Scrapbookpictures.com.

Once I got the pictures, I cut all of them out and used mod-podge to glue them to the blocks. I like to use a sponge-brush and paint the mod-podge on to the block and then place the picture on top. When I would paint the picture it would curl up and it was hard to get it on the block. While the glue is still wet, there are sometimes bubbles on the pictures but once they were dry everything was flat. I glued 4 pictures on the sides of the block and put scrapbook paper on the top and bottom.

These are all four sides of Lily's block and the scrapbook paper on the top of another block

When the mod-podge dried, I sanded the edges of the photos with sand-paper.

Finally, I painted a coat of Aged Varnish over every photo and paper to give it an aged look. *Aged Varnish is optional and you could just paint another layer of mod-podge over everything.* The Varnish also gives the wood a bit of a stained look.

I have seen a book/magazine that has instructions on how to make these blocks, but I can't remember what it was called and haven't seen it at the craft store for a while. Please let me know if you need any other info to make these for yourself!