Of Mice and Men

It's sneaking up on us. Fathers Day will be here before we know it! And that means it's time to do some thinking and planning. We've all heard the "times are tough" story a lot in the past year or so and I could give you a sob story about my 6 months of unemployment.... but I'll save you the tears. What it boils down to is that the best options are homemade gifts. They are inexpensive and a lot more personal. Beats a neck tie any day!

My homemade idea is something quick and easy and something I know most men will use. Why order one from Walgreens when you can make your own personalized, picture collage mouse pad?! So easy to do....

Supplies:

Printable Fabric for an ink jet printer
mouse pad
(and a computer and printer of course!)

I bought my transfer paper at Office Max. It was about $15 for the pack. Pricey, I know! But I have great plans to use it for other projects.
I didn't have any freebie mouse pads from the insurance man lying around so I bought a couple from Big Lots for $.80 each. I love that wacky store!

Once the supplies are ready, hop onto your computer, and using a graphics program, import and arrange your photos. I used Microsoft Publisher. It is very user friendly. You could even just use Word if you set your margins to make your work space the same size as the pad.

And my scientific method to make sure the pictures would fit onto the mouse pad:



(I am holding the mouse pad over the monitor. This works if you make sure your scale is set to 100%.)

Once your pictures are arranged (and saved!) exactly how you want them, it's a good idea to mark a sheet of paper with 'front' and 'back' and do a trial run. You don't want to make a mistake and print on the wrong side of that expensive transfer paper!

After it's out of the printer let it sit for a couple of minutes to make sure the ink is dry.

Now it's all dry it's time to trace the pad onto the backside of the transfer paper. I used a sharpie for this since the paper is kind of slick.



Now that it's all cut out it's time to iron!
Dump ALL of the water out of your iron and get it nice and HOT!



Make sure you get everything lined up perfectly, shiny and sticky side down, and iron, pressing firmly, for about a minute.

Let it cool.

You're done! Your loved ones can start rolling and clicking on your kid's faces!

Come back next week for more Fathers Day ideas when I share my man's favorite dessert!