First Day!

With school starting in just one day, I figured I would get started on a little sign for my sweet kindergartner to hold while I take her picture before she leaves for her first day of school.  This little project cost me less than $10 (I think) and took me a little over an hour to get it to look just the way I had envisioned...

Here's what you need:
- square, unfinished wood frame for a 12x12 picture
- one black piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper
- one white piece of 12x12 scrapbook paper
- miscellaneous scraps of paper in various colors
- red paint
* a bonus if you have a cricut machine and a gypsy to cut out all the letters and pictures

I painted the frame three times to make sure it was completely red.  After letting it dry, I put the black piece of scrapbook paper in the frame so that I knew the exact area I had to work with.  I used the cricut and gypsy to cut out the letters and pictures.  The gypsy is especially helpful for measuring and making sure that everything is going to fit in the space you are using.

After arranging the letters and picture just the way I had imagined it should look, this is the end result:

My precious little kindergartner was very excited to take pictures with it that next morning (and so was one of her friends):

I plan to use the back side of the piece of paper to do the same thing for the last day of school.  After we have taken pictures of the last day of school, I will keep the sign in her file (school days files to be blogged about soon) for that school year.  I plan to use the same frame and make a new sign each year.  If she allows me to do this every year (fingers crossed) until she graduates, it will be a nice little keepsake to look back on...