Last March, Jesse and I journeyed to San Francisco, met up with Zeina, and headed to Urban Hardware to see our friend Mason at his new location. A wheelbarrow filled with small wooden blocks sat at the storefront. I asked Mason what these were used for, and he replied that they were decoration, however they kept children entertained as the parents looked around. I asked him if I could purchase some, as immediately I knew what I wanted to do with them. He kindly suggested I just take them which was totally awesome and generous!
They were small unfinished wooden blocks - with rough edges desperately needing to be sanded down. So that became my first step:
Next step involved painting all the sides white. I searched all over for non-toxic kid friendly paint, and found a few different options out there, but felt most comfortable with what University Art on J. Street had to offer.
Non-toxic paint:
After all sides were painted white, I then painted borders in various colors around each edge of the blocks. Every step involving painting was pretty time intensive as you had to wait for sides to dry in order to begin opposite sides.
And finally - adding letters!! I tried to do each side with various styles, uppercase, lowercase, fancy, serif, san serif... Zeina was able to help with some of these as well!
sarah barkawi
And the finished product was boxed up in a nice wooden box and opened by lil Omar yesterday at his birthday brunch!! Super stoked about this entire project!
If you are interested in doing this yourself, you can find unfinished wooden blocks available for sale. I am thinking about repeating this project so I did a little searching, and if you google "unfinished wooden blocks" all sorts of options appear.
