diy... mom's altaras... part 1

Over the Winter I worked on my Dad's altaras. I made one for each of my sibs and one for me. I sent them for the 1st anniversary of his leaving us. And now we are coming up on the anniversary of my Mom's passing and I need to get hers done and in the mail soon. I think these have been meaningful for us and I want to share with you my process so you can make one too if you wish.

As we were cleaning out their house I would collect little bits of their lives. You need paper things to mod podge on to the inside and outside of the boxes. You also need little things that are 3 dimensional. Since I am making 4 of these I am sorting these a bit by color of items. As I make the second set of boxes I am trying to make Mom's altara go with Dad's altara for each of the sets. I am also trying to make each set work together as a unit in case these all work their way home to my niece and nephew over the years. But they also need to be a stand alone piece too.

These are the outsides that are now done. For continuity I've put pages from Dad's old prayer book on the tops of all of Mom's and Dad's boxes and added a medal to each. All the outsides are the same and I used mod podge to affix all the paper items. I scanned this info because I would not have had 4 of these items. My Mom back in 1973 bowled in a tournament on TV and won. These are her winning scores from that game. The other side is a love note from my Dad to my Mom. Every child should find something like this after their parents are gone.

These are surprisingly time consuming. Lots of piecing things together like a puzzle plus everything you mod podge has to dry.

Part 2 soon...