Forget-Me-Not Craft

When Pres. Deiter F. Uchtdorf gave his magnificent talk at the 2011 Relief Society Broadcast (you can read it here),  I knew I needed to make myself a visual reminder of the things he said.  I wanted to “Forget Not” his inspiring words!!!
And this is what I ended up with!
And I LOVE it!!!
I started with this really rough piece of 2×6 (I wanted a rough look!) and some 2×4’s.  I sanded and spray painted and sanded a bit more.  Made myself a forget-me-not flower template and printed my words out on the computer.
I’ve never tried the carbon paper method before but it worked really well.  I just put a piece of carbon paper between my computer printed words and the wood, and traced around the letters.  It left me a nice little outline of my letters on the wood.  Now I just had to hand paint in the lines.
I only hand-painted my big words – the others were just printed on the computer and then distressed and mod podged onto the blocks of wood along with scrapbook paper.
I stained my blocks before I added any paper though – I’ve had bad luck with stain and mod podged paper before, so I always stain first, and it always turns out!!!
Isn’t it cute?  I used burnt umber oil paint to colour my leaves and add a little more distressing.
And the blocks can be arranged many different ways, much to the children’s delight!
A close-up of the Forget-Me-Not flower (at least, my version of it – I googled it and there are tons of varieties of this little flower!!!) and the etchings.
And now it sits on my dresser and I see it whenever I leave my bedroom, reminding me daily of what I need to “Forget Not”.
Just four days ago, my guy grabbed the bottom piece – the one that says “The difference between good and foolish sacrifices” and brought it to me in bed. I was still in sleep mode at 8:20am – on the last Saturday of Christmas holidays! He suggest that my foolish sacrifice was lounging around in bed when I should be getting up and going to support my daughter at her basketball game. And he was right! I got ready in ten minutes and ate my breakfast in the car as we drove the half hour drive. We got seated just in time for the opening jump ball.
It was the right thing to do!!!