DIY “Love” Photo-Holder Wooden Blocks #LowesCreator

As a part of the Lowe’s Cre­ative Ideas Blog­ger team, this month’s chal­lenge was to cre­ate some Valentine’s décor. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big Valentine’s dec­o­ra­tor. Now, that we have a man­tel, I might do a lit­tle more hol­i­day dec­o­rat­ing with that. But, I don’t usu­ally put out a lot. So, I wanted to cre­ate some­thing that I could pos­si­bly keep out year round. I decided on some photo-holder wooden blocks. While they are indeed Valentine’s col­ors, they hap­pen to also be our wed­ding col­ors. So, I can keep our “love blocks ” out year round by our wed­ding pho­tos! Those are our engage­ment pho­tos! Awwww! I loved the look of the black & white pho­tos with the blocks. Though, I’d really like to get some 4x6s of our wed­ding to dis­play on the blocks since the color scheme is just right. Here’s one of my favorite snap­shots (& one of the few dig­i­tal) of our wed­ding fes­tiv­i­ties: So, these fun “love” blocks are not only per­fect for Valentine’s Day, but for dis­play­ing our wed­ding pho­tos! They would also make a fun wed­ding gift! You could do them in what­ever the wed­ding col­ors are!

Sup­plies:

• 1 4x4x8 piece of wood cut into 4-inch cube blocks
• sand paper
• two spray paint col­ors (I used white & red)
• vinyl let­ters
• clothes pins
• hot glue & glue gun

Direc­tions:

First up, you’ll need to get the wood. We snagged a 4x4x8 at Lowe’s for just over $8 with tax. Many stores will even do the cut­ting for you (that’s what we did)! If every­thing is cut per­fectly, you should get 24. Ours weren’t, so we ended up with 23! I love the larger size of the 4x4 AND how inex­pen­sive it is for 20+ wooden blocks! I have so many projects in mind! Once you’ve got the wood cut, then you’ll either sand first and then spray paint. Or, the other way around. I knew that I wanted a more dis­tressed look, so I opted to spray paint first and sand later. Plus, that way, if there are any drips or uneven­ness with the paint, I could take care of that after with the sand­pa­per. I sprayed the blocks with white paint first (because I wanted the white to show through after sand­ing). After the white was dry, I sprayed the blocks red. When spray­ing, just note that the cut sides (with the rough wood) do seem to soak up much more pain than the outer sides. While spray­ing the blacks red, I also sprayed the clothes pins red.I let the blocks dry for about 24 hours and then got to sand­ing (using a fine sand­pa­per). I used a lit­tle hand-held sand paper holder which was really nice. Much eas­ier for grip­ping! There were quite a bit of wood splin­ters around the cut edges. So, I sanded those off, as well as giv­ing the blocks a dis­tressed look by gen­tly rub­bing all edges & fronts with the sand­pa­per. For the let­ters, I used vinyl (3″ size). If you don’t have access to an elec­tronic cut­ter (like Cri­cut or Sil­hou­ette), look for vinyl let­ters at Lowe’s. My store car­ries some. Also, you could free hand paint the let­ters on or paint with a stencil. 

At this point, you could totally just stop here. But, I wanted to be able to use them as photo hold­ers also. I had thought about doing cute wire hold­ers com­ing out the top, but then I wouldn’t be able to con­fig­ure the blocks in dif­fer­ent ways. And, that’s the fun thing about blocks! You can do ver­ti­cal…Or, put them in a square sim­i­lar to the famous “Love” let­ters statue:
To be able to use the blocks as photo hold­ers, just hot glue a clothes pin on the back! That way, you can attach pho­tos if you want, but the blocks can still be stacked and con­fig­ured how­ever you like. They’ll look great out for Valentine’s Day or just in our bed­room with wed­ding pho­tos!
For even more ideas, visit Lowes Cre­ative Ideas and fol­low along with Lowe’s on Pin­ter­est.You can also sign up to receive their free Cre­ative Ideas Mag­a­zine, which is full of all kinds of ideas & inspi­ra­tion!

Dis­clo­sure:  I am a mem­ber of the Lowe’s Cre­ative Ideas Cre­ators & Influ­encers Net­work and receive a Lowe’s gift card to com­plete my projects. How­ever, all ideas, opin­ions, & expe­ri­ences are entirely my own.

Linked to: *Flamingo Toes, *Craft-O-Maniac Mon­day, *Home Sto­ries A to Z