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Saturday, January 7, 2012

Story Time Cubes

Here is the post as promised showing what I did with one set of my collage blocks from the Rock The Block promotion that CTMH is having right now.

I made Story Time Cubes: Here is what they are!


Story cubes are a cute game or educational tool for the classroom or family. You choose a minimum of 3 dice (you can choose all of them). Using the pictures that show after the dice have been rolled, make up a story that incorporates all of the pictures on the dice. You can do verbal story telling, written stories, you can even have the next player roll and they have to add on to the existing story with what they've rolled. A GREAT GAME with 10 million combinations!


Materials:

1 Set of Collage Blocks
Patterned Papers (I used some of my retired CTMH paper to do this: Olivia, Paper Garden, Perfect Day, and Grace)
Ink (Hey you can't stamp without inks! I used Cocoa Ink, Desert Sand, Sorbet, and Twilight... CTMH ink of course!)
Stamps (There are too many sets to list here, but the object was to find all kinds of different images from my sets so that I could cover all sides of the blocks (that's 54 sets of images))
Modge Podge
Foam BrushLink
Liquid Glass
Sponge Daubers
Stickers
Round Sponge
Ruler





Here is what I did:

1) I measured the block sizes and I cut base pieces to cover the blocks in various patterns from my paper. (2" cuts were perfect!)

2) I used Modge Podge to fix these to the blocks. I DID NOT paint the top of the paper with the Modge Podge, I just painted the block and affixed the paper. (Make sure you leave time for them all to dry and don't place them too close together... you may get them stuck if you used to much Modge Podge!)

3) Once everything dried, I used the sponge daubers to give a little color to all the edges. Just pick the ink you want to use, and daub away!

4) Once that was done it was time to cut the pieces that I was going to stamp on. I used a creme colored card stock and cut them at 2" also.

5) After all the cutting was done, I selected my stamps and went to town stamping! You have to do 54 DIFFERENT stamps for this game... so get your stash ready!

6) After stamping, I cut around them.

7) Next I used the the round sponge to color the edges. I made sure I colored the edges of each one to match the pattern paper I was going to adhere the stamped image too.

8) To adhere, I used liquid glass this time. LOVE THIS STUFF!

9) Now its time to work on the base! I simply used the ruler to measure the outside sides of the bottom base and the inside of the base. Then I cut patterned paper for the outside and creme for the inside. (This is where the rules for your game are going to go)

10) I used stickers I had from a retired level one paper packet and markers to write up my rules.

11) I adhered everything using liquid glass again. (Ha Ha... look at the twix wrapper.. wonder how that got there!)

12) And voila! You have a great game for classroom or family time!


* I haven't done this yet with mine, but you will want to put a top sealing coat on all of your blocks and the base piece. That way when the dice are rolled often you don't lose the quality of your work! I'm flirting with spraying a clear gloss coat on and then using a shellac type covering.


I think my next project will actually be a picture collage! What are you making?!