Jake's Toy Chest

Some of you have heard that Jake is starting a little side business. He loves wood working and always makes little puzzles and brain teasers and games and things so we decided he should sell some! I had never seen how a puzzle is made before so I was fascinated when I helped Jake make the puzzle that we gave my parents for Christmas! It's actually a pretty long process. I took pictures and thought I'd put them up here.

First he prints the picture and uses something similar to modge podge to glue the picture to the wood. Then he uses a jigsaw to cut around the puzzle. Then he takes the big middle piece and starts cutting the little puzzle pieces. Here are a few pictures:

Then he sands (by hand because the pieces are small and curvy) each piece and the border. Depending on how many pieces he cut he needs to shrink the border to fit tighter around the puzzle. Then he glues and staples the border to a backing. Then he put a finish on all the wood. Let me tell ya, after putting linseed oil on 130 tiny pieces of a puzzle, my hand was KILLING ME!

If you go to facebook.com/jakestoychest you can see more pictures of the things he makes and sells. Once we get going there will be more things. We'll also be setting up a website here soon.

Another thing, we decided that I could make sleeves for the toys he makes. You know how now ipods come with sleeves and e-readers come with sleeves and sleeves are just more special? (haha) so my momsy showed me a few different ways that I could sew a sleeve for each puzzle, number game, brainteaser, etc that we sell. They are so cute and I am so excited! For now we have different size plastic bags and we printed out Jake's Toy Chest onto card stock. Until I have a sewing machine/time to make a bunch of sleeves we will just make them for the puzzles. Also, eventually we are going to make a little stamp that says Jake's Toy Chest on it and we'll wood burn it into each item we sell. I am SO EXCITED it's going to be so super cute.

Here's what our plastic bags look like:

Here are a few of the sleeves:

Here are some puzzles Jake has made (in these pictures they aren't in their holder border thing they are just the pieces):


Here are a few other things he has made:


I will keep y'all updated as we start making more toys/games/puzzles and as we make a website and everything. :)