Decorated blocks serve as story starters

When I was little, I used to beg my father to tell me stories about his own childhood, about trading places with his identical twin or some other adventure.

Now, my 5-year-old son pleads with me for stories, but he usually wants his favorite toys to star as main characters. When I run out of plots for Thomas the Tank Engine, I turn the tables and ask him to tell me a story. If we're both stuck, we get out our handmade set of story dice and take turns spinning a yarn together.

Story dice are simply wooden cubes decorated with pictures that act as prompts for storytelling. One person can roll the dice a few times and construct a story around the results: a cowboy, taxi cab and tree, for example. In a group, participants can take turns, with one person rolling a single die, starting the story based on that picture and then stopping for the next person to add to the story based on another roll.

Plain wooden blocks in various sizes can be purchased at craft stores or online. The images can be added with stickers or rubber stamps, or you can cut out pictures from magazines or use printed clipart images and adhere them with decoupage glue.

I wanted detailed images against the wooden background of the blocks, so I used images created for digital scrapbooking and printed them on transparent temporary tattoo paper made for inkjet printers.

A set of three makes a nice gift, and storing the dice in a small drawstring bag makes them portable, perfect for killing time at a restaurant or waiting room. The dice also would be great to bring along on a car trip this summer. Just take turns plucking a block out of the bag and let the storytelling begin.

STORY DICE

Materials:

— small wooden blocks (Mine were 1.25 inches)

— clip art or digital scrapbooking images

— photo editing or word processing software

— temporary tattoo paper for inkjet printers

— an inkjet printer

— scissors or ruler and X-acto knife

— spray acrylic sealer or decoupage glue

Instructions:

1. Use photo editing or word processing software to resize images to fit the blocks and arrange them on a page for printing.

To make it easier to fit as many images as possible on one page, I created an 8.5-by-11-inch document in Photoshop and made a grid of squares each slightly bigger than my blocks, 1.325 inches. I was able to fit 48 images on one page, which is enough to cover eight blocks.

2. Print your page of images onto the temporary tattoo paper. If your printer has a "borderless" setting, use it to ensure the images won't get cut off around the edges.

3. Cut around each image in a square slightly bigger than the size of your blocks.

4. Gently peel back the corner of one image and lift the tattoo film off the backing paper. Stick the square film onto one side of a block, smoothing it down so there are no wrinkles. It is tough to peel the film off the block without tearing it if you put it on crooked, so be careful.

5. Repeat with more images until you've covered all six sides of the block.

6. Because the temporary tattoo images will wipe off easily if they get wet, it's necessary to seal the image. Spray with acrylic sealer, following directions on the can. You can spray four adjacent sides and the top, then let them dry before flipping the block over and spraying the last side. Or, skip the spray and brush on decoupage glue, such as Mod-Podge.

Woodenblocks:http://www.caseyswood.com/DigitalscrapbookingimagesbyKateHadfieldDesigns:http://www.the-lilypad.com