Pumpkin Puzzle Blocks!

That's it:  It is officially autumn.  The leaves are turning red, our garden (tiny as it is) is, well, about done of life, and my mom and I finished bottling applesauce this afternoon.  (Homemade applesauce is totally worth it, but, whew! what a job!)

Anyways, now for my favorite craft from the Craft Night:  Pumpkin Puzzle Blocks!

The original idea for these blocks was to cut six pictures of your family into 2x2 inch squares, and mod podge the pictures onto little 2x2 inch blocks, so you have a cute puzzle of your family members.

But I thought, It is October--wouldn't it be cute to make a Jack-O-Lantern puzzle?  What if you could have different faces, and be able to interchange the parts...

Maybe put three different mouths together...

Or have one eye have two pupils, and the other have none...

Yep, I wanted to do it.

Ready to make one, too?  You need:

to print out my pumpkin designs.  Or make your own.  If you make your own, be sure to have the points where the features cross the cut lines match on all the pumpkins; that way, each block will line up with blocks from other faces.  (Great idea, Mr. MadeIt!)  My pumpkin designs are at the bottom of this post.

nine 2x2 inch wooden blocks

Mod Podge (or water-down regular school glue to a nice paintable consistency)

 foam paintbrush

something to pour the Mod Podge on

Cut the Jack-O-Lanterns on the cut lines.  I did one face at a time for ease of organization.  And because I was running back and forth from one craft to the other as I waited for each side's Mod Podge to dry.

Coat one side of your first block with Mod Podge.  Help me out, experienced Mod Podgers--should it be a thin or thick coat?  Because I sometimes had to squish down ripply paper regardless.  Another lady there did say that you could use a library card, etc, to carefully push out bubbles, but I didn't try it.  (Why?  Well, mostly because I was hurrying, trying to get all three crafts done that night.)

Anyways, after your thin-or-thick coat of Mod Podge, carefully put on one of your pumpkin squares.  You have to get it where you want it pretty quickly, while the Mod Podge is still really wet, because once it starts to dry, the paper's not really going anywhere.

Put another coat of Mod Podge on top of the paper.  Make sure to get the edges really well, since that's where these blocks will take the most beating when they get played with.

Repeat with one side of each block.

Take a break while that side dries.  (If I'd been at home when I did this project, I totally would have taken a hair dryer to it--I'm not much of one for waiting for things to dry.)

And just do that for each side.   Be sure to have the same feature always on the same block.

Like so.

Now you can put together your jack-o-lantern however you'd like!

Um, that's not what I meant, Boo, but why not? 

Happy crafting!

{Here are the jack-o-lanterns to print out.  Remember that each pumpkin needs to be 6x6 inches, so make sure your computer doesn't try to scale them when they print.}

(Right click, "Save to Downloads" or similar command)