I don’t know about you, but I always seem to struggle with good ideas for Father’s Day, and with my children being so young, it really is up to me to come up with something!

I’m still working on what we’re going to do this year, but I thought I’d share with you the thrifty craft we made last Father’s Day. It was well-received by both Dad and Granddaddy, and they both have these proudly displayed on their desks at work and at home even now: Custom photo frames. Even if your children are little like mine, they can help to design the layout for the decorations and choose the photo to use in the frame!

I picked up the plain, unfinished wooden frames at Michael’s craft store for around $1 each. We picked a theme for each frame and set out to decorate them with items we already had at home. I printed the photos on photo paper using our printer, and these custom gifts were ready to go in no time!

To make the “Cute as a Button” frame, I printed the words “Cute as a…” on colored cardstock, laminated it, and hot-glued it to the top of the frame. Then we selected buttons from our collection to glue around the edges.

The beach-themed frame came about because we had just taken a family trip to Ocracoke where we had collected lots of shells and captured several cute beach photos of the kids. For this frame, the children picked out their favorite shells, laid out the design, and then I attached them with my hot glue gun.

There are lots of variations you can do with this project to truly make it a unique creation. If you want the entire gift to be handmade or are in a time pinch, you can construct your own wooden frame using 4 large craft sticks (tongue depressors) glued together to frame your photo. You can add magnets to the back of the frame so that it can stick on the refrigerator, or onto Dad’s magnetic whiteboard at work. If you have time to allow for drying, you can paint the unfinished frame before you decorate it. You can also buy a finished frame, but still decorate it the way we did; I think Dollar Tree often sells small photo frames for $1 each.

The sky is really the limit with this craft, so be creative and come up with something your dad will love!

Happy Father’s Day!

Genny is a former Wake County Public School System elementary and reading teacher, who is now a stay-at-home mom of two preschoolers in Cary. Read more on her blog In Lieu of Preschool and Facebook page. Find her here a couple of times a month.