Family is Where Our Story Begins

While visiting my mom last week, my sister Rachel and I decided that we needed a little project to work on. Of course, we were originally inspired to work on this project by our so called 'non-crafty' sister Dana!  She first made a birthday board for our family about a year ago.  It's truly wonderful and inspired Rach and I to do the same. 

After about four visits to Hobby Lobby, a lot of modge podge, bottle caps and patience; my birthday board is complete!

To start this project, I painted a plain wood plaque dark brown and sealed it with some modge podge.  I then covered some cardboard letters with teal scrapbook paper.  If your paper isn't exactly smooth around the edges of chipboard letters, use a nail file to sand down the edges.  I used modge podge again to seal the letters, but also to glue them to the plaque.
  

 In order to attach the bottle caps to the board, I screwed the pins in evenly across the board.  

Using a nail, I nailed holes in each bottle cap.  Then I add jump rings in between each bottle cap.  This was definitely the hardest part of the whole project!  I used needle nose pliers, my fingernails, anything in order to get those jump rings attached to those bottle caps.  It was worth it when I finished, but it was some work! :)

Now for the last part, I used some of my favorite scrapbooking paper and color combinations to cut circles out to cover each bottle cap.  For the months, I used some chevron paper and black letter stickers with the initial of each month.  Then, in order for them to stand out even more, I added glossy accents overtop of the paper to make it shine.  

For the dates of each birthday, I used a Hero Arts stamp set to stamp each one individually.  After stamping them, I used modge podge again to seal the paper.
  

Then, to set the wedding anniversaries apart from the birthdays, I painted some wooden hearts a reddish color and stamped the dates on each heart.  Of course, again, I used modge podge to seal the paint. 

Lastly, I wrote the names of family members on the back of their birthday or anniversary and covered it with modge podge again.
  

 Now my husband and I can easily remember all of our family member's birthdays and anniversaries and look forward to adding more and more bottle caps as our family grows. To be sure that I will be ready to add more dates as more family members are added, I made sure that I have extra supplies and extra circles cut out of matching scrapbook paper!  Hopefully, we'll be adding more bottle caps before we know it. :)