Family Reunion - Celebrating Grandpa's Birthday - Family Farm - Barn Board Bezels

Hello everyone!  This past weekend was a little busy around here.  On Saturday we had our family reunion and then on Sunday we celebrated my Grandpa's 84th birthday!  It was so great to see all of the family together--to visit and catch up with everyone, have some wonderful food (we had a hog roast), play games, look at old photo, share memories of the past and create new memories.

For the past few years when everyone is home for the reunion we always try to get a few pictures of  my aunts and uncles with my grandpa.

We were taking a few practice shots before my grandpa came outside.  My mom is the first one and then it's my uncle John, aunt Gail (she's the crafty one), aunt Cory, and my uncle Brian.  

Here is a picture with my Grandpa and all of his kids.

This one is my Grandpa and Grandma.  I can't believe he is going to be 84 on Wednesday!  He is still very active and young at heart.  I don't even have the words that could come close to describing how much I love him and how special he is.  He has always been such a huge part of my life.  We are the only two in the family who are left handed (southpaws).  As he would say we are the only ones in our right minds--LOL!  When I was little I was such a tomboy and I was always tagging along with my grandpa on the farm.  I loved being around all of the animals and nature and hanging out with him.  He has taught me so many important life lessons, to be kind, what it means to be a good person, to be true to yourself, to love, to forgive, to believe in God and how important family is--an many, many more things over the years.

Here is a picture of my mom and grandpa.  I love this picture!  

Here is a picture of the barn on the family farm that I took at the last reunion.  This is the farm that my grandpa lived on for many years and after he retired my uncle John who had farmed with my grandpa for years took over the farm and his family moved there.  The barn is no longer standing--it was just getting too old.  But my uncle John still has a lot of the barn boards.  He has made some fantastic pieces out of the barn board.  Both of my uncles and my grandpa are great with wood working!  In fact my uncle John made me a wine tote (for wine bottles) and a few frames for my birthday.  I'll have to post some pictures of them.  Anyways I have been wanting to make something with the barn board and put my own spin on it but I couldn't figure out what to create until just recently and then one day it hit me--I could make some bezels with pieces of the barn board.  I could preserve them forever in ICE Resin! :)  So I thought it would be perfect timing with everyone home to make some bezels for my mom, aunts, uncles and my grandpa.

These are the bezels I created.  I re-sized the picture of the barn so it would fit inside the bezel.  Then I had my husband help me to cut off some thinner pieces of the barn board and then I cut them down to size to fit in the bezel and frame the picture.  I added a piece of old book paper behind the photo because I knew there would be a few small little places that wouldn't be covered by the wood and I didn't just want it to be an empty space.  Then I added ICE Resin.  For the ladies I added small keys and for the guys I added a small gear.  I didn't want to add too much to the bezels because I wanted the picture and pieces of barn board to be the main focus.  I wrapped the bezels up and put them in gift bags and gave them to everyone as shown in the picture above and then I left it up to them if they wanted to make it into a key chain or put a magnet on the back.  They did a little of both.

Here is a close up of the one with the key.

Here is a close up with the gear.

My mom and aunt Gail decided they wanted to have magnets and my aunt Cory wanted to have a key chain.  I had some old jewelry that was from my grandma.  She was my grandpa's first wife and mother to my mom and her bothers and sisters and she passed away several years ago.  I used some of the jewelry pieces to create the dangles on their bezels.  Everyone really liked the bezels and thought it was pretty neat that the barn board was in there and it will always be preserved.

Thank you so much for joining me today and letting me share a little of my family with you.  :)

Hugs & Smiles,

Heidi

Supplies

Spellbinders Paper Arts® MB1-002 Squares 1 -Bronze, MB2-004 Circles 2-Bronze, MD1-002 Squares 1 Dies, MD1-008 Squares 2 Die

ICE Resin