Block Party

Because I had lapsed into a blog-funk (a blunk, perhaps? Nope, just looked it up and it’s Urbandictionaried – dagnabbit), I decided that I should try and keep my posts to once-a-week.  That decision took pressure off of me in terms of getting something posted that someone out there might find of use or at least quasi-entertaining.

Well, I’m jumping the gun on this one since I already had a post ready to go for next week, but I don’t want to wait yet another week to show this off – because I’m impatient like that.  Because I’m too excited about these:

I truly wish that I could take any sort of credit for these.  Perhaps I can take a teensy bit of credit for saying to a teammate that I wished there was a better way to display our small event flyers that parents take with them.  Up until today we just laid them on the counter where they got in the way/got messy.  My wonderful teammate was the one who suddenly said, “why not use alphabet blocks like those business card holders?”  SHAZZAM! The only other part I played in these were finding the blocks and purchasing them.  After that I handed them off to my boss who handed them off to her woodworking father with basic guidelines of what we wanted.

He took the idea to a whole ‘nother level.

I had expected individually cut blocks for mixing and matching.  Yes, I was concerned about them being easily knocked over, but I knew we could at least try my trusty museum putty to stabilize them.  But what arrived today was nothing short of spectacular.  They’re sturdy and stable – and even each one has a pun or special meaning.  I still puttied those suckers down (between curious kids and frazzled moms, I wanted to do my best to keep them from being knocked over).

The only addition I needed to make was putting a cut-out piece of cardboard (wrapped in colored paper) to help keep the flyers upright.  It took a few moments and they really make the flyers look good from the front.  I may add some fun stickers to the back side so that the staff has something fun to look at too!

As I was puttying these bad boys down, I had another lightbulb moment: these would fix a problem we were having with our new picture book cart.  The problem was that we chose to use the top shelf of a small book cart as a faceout display shelf – which looks great, but the books would sometimes slide and fall to the ground (not a good thing with children running around).  I had thought that I should find a small tension rod or something that I could decorate to help keep that form happening.  Well, in my hands I had the solution:

I puttied the heck out of those blocks and they’re doing the trick!  I may even make a small sign to stick in one of the holders indicating what’s on the cart (there are signs on both sides).  I am absolutely tickled with how good they look.  I’ll revisit this post and put an update in a few months in terms of whether or not they stay put.

I wish that I could give a tutorial on how to make these, but since I didn’t make them, I can only speculate.  I’d say that heavy glue was involved, and a nice power saw – and some paint for the bases.  It seems like Woodworking 101 – so hopefully either you or someone you know have the skills to make this happen (and if you do, then please share your results with me).

The best part of these are that to me they represent a collaborative effort where a problem was given a unique and fun solution through the power of teamwork.  So when I see these blocks I get a warm fuzzy feeling since they embody my desire to make everyone working at the library a team full of innovators and problem-solvers.

Block on!