We live a long way from our family and I am always trying to think of ways to increase their presence in our kids lives. We have lots of photos around, we tell our family stories and we skype and facetime.

My daughter loves building make believe worlds with wooden blocks and other bits and bobs. She has a few little wooden people that are always involved.

She turns three on Sunday and I thought it would be cool to make a set of wooden family members for her birthday. I had a bit of a scout around online and used a combination of ideas. I know a lot of us live away from family so I thought I would put together a little tutorial for those who might be interested.

You will have to excuse the streaky, painted background. It seems I wasn’t the first in our art area today.

I love how they turned out! I can’t wait to see her little face and see her grandparents, cousins, aunty and uncle brought into her games.

You will need:

• Wooden peg dolls. Ours measure 9cm.
• Printed photos. I asked our family members to send us a photo of their front and back. A pretty weird request! I printed the pictures on normal paper to be a few centimetres longer than the dolls.
• Modge Podge. I always use homemade as it is a lot cheaper. I mix 3 parts PVA glue to 1 part water.
• Paintbrush

First, cut the pictures out, then cut the head off the body.

Cover the doll and the picture liberally with modge podge. I applied the head and body separately and trimmed the legs that were too long.

After it has sat for a minute, the paper becomes really pliable and you can use your finger or paintbrush to smooth out the picture around the curves of the doll. There will be a couple of creases which you can’t notice.

After the dolls had dried, I applied two more coats of modge podge. They feel well sealed.

Don’t they look great?!

I am going to get some more so I can make our family as well. The entire process before the final coats took one episode of Paw Patrol and I managed to make six. I then applied the second and third coats as I remembered during the afternoon. Easy!