Make Your Own
Photo Cubes Gallery
Level of Difficulty: Easy - This craft is simple enough for 4 or 5 year olds to do with adult
supervision and one that kids of all ages will enjoy making. If you have any questions while doing
this craft, please click on Contact Us and we will respond as quickly as possible.
Estimated Completion time:
Approximately 20 minutes per block.
List of Materials you will need:
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3-5 or more square wood toy blocks or wood cubes about 1" to 2" square, one for each
picture.
Photos of friends or family or copies of photos if you don't want to cut the originals. Small
school photos work really well.,
Colorful patterned origami paper, magazines or wrapping paper. For each cube you
need enough paper to cover 5 sides.
Pencil for tracing squares
Plain white computer paper
Glue stick or craft glue
Scissors
Markers
Introduction:
Do you want an original way to display photos of the people you love? You can create a
miniature changeable photo gallery with pictures of all your favorite family and friends using
wood blocks that you used to play with when you were very little (or you can purchase wood
cubes at a craft store.) Gather up some patterned paper and glue and you're ready to go.
We will show you a step-by-step way to cover the cubes and assemble a stacking gallery and
give you ideas about a variety of ways to decorate the blocks.
When you are done we would love to see your creations. Please go to our gallery and upload
your finished masterpieces so that others can see what you’ve made.
Instructions:
1. Collect the wood blocks or cubes. Five is a good quantity to begin your gallery. Place a
cube on a piece of white paper and trace a square. This will become the template size
for the photographs and printed papers. If you make
your gallery with a mix of different size blocks, trace a template for each size.
2. Look for photographs of family and friends where the face is slightly smaller than the size
of the square template you just measured. Check with your parents to make sure it is
okay to use the photograph. If you want to keep the original make a photocopy and
use that.
3. Place the template on the photo, trace around it with a pencil and cut the photo out.
4. For each block, cut 5 squares of printed, patterned or colored paper.
5. Glue the photo to one side of the square, then cover the other sides with the printed
squares you cut out.
6. Repeat this process for each block you make
7. Stack the blocks as you like and either glue them together or leave them loose.
Options:
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Create a photo-biography. Collect a series of photos that have been taken over a
period of several years of just one person. It's fun to see how that person has changed.
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Use black and white photos or convert color photos to black and white and complete
the theme by covering the rest of the block with black and white printed papers that you
find or design yourself.
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Create your own patterned squares to cover the blocks. One way is to make a colorful
abstract picture and cut it into squares. Or you can do each small square design
Individually.
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Assemble a person sculpture using a face photo for the head and drawing the rest of the
body parts on the other blocks. In this example we used 4 blocks: one for the head and
the other three for the body. We traced the outlines of three blocks in a vertical row
touching each other so it was 3 times longer than it was wide. We drew the body to fit
into these three segments, colored with markers and cut the squares apart. These were
glued to the blocks, the head was added and the blocks were glued together.
When you are done we would love to see your creations. Please go to our gallery @
http://www.creativityforkids.com/gallery/gallery.aspx and upload your finished masterpieces so
that others can see what you’ve made.