Handmade First Birthday Present for my Grandson

The finished project!  Three toy cars (or two cars and one truck) for Matthew's first birthday!

The other day was our grandson's first birthday and the party was today!

I've been working on these wooden cars as a surprise for him.

Here he is sitting on my lap today. He's playing with them at the party after having opened them.

He knew just what to do with them, roll them back and forth!

 I made three cars:

1. His Dad's 1988 Ford Mustang (limited edition "T-top" model) (Black on top, red on bottom)
2. His Uncle Blake's 2003 Ford Mach 1 Mustang (all Red)
3. His Uncle Jon's 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser (all white) (nicknamed "Holly The FJ" (FJ is the land cruiser model)

Here are the three cars (well, I guess Uncle Jon's is more of a truck) that I copied the toys from and the original wooden cut-outs I made of them.

Matthew's Dad's 1998 Ford Mustang

Uncle Blake's 2003 Ford Mach 1 Mustang

 

Uncle Jon's 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser "Holly" #hollytheFJ

Here's when I was cutting them out. The board costed only $2.04 at Home Depot (on the clearance cart). I used a jig saw to cut out the shapes (which I drew on them with pencil using free hand from looking at photos of the cars) - I cut the wheels with a hole saw (you can see it in the photo) and just sat them on the cars for this photo. You can see the wood with the holds cut out of it. The tires on the Land Cruiser were slightly bigger and set so the "truck' was higher off the ground than the Mustangs.

  

The cars with Wheels on them (I used some wooden dowels for axles). They are ready to be painted. At first I was thinking about drawing some windows on them after painting, but later decided it wouldn't add anything to the toys. Sometimes simple is better.

Black tires painted and part of 1988 Mustang (note the masking tape on the Mustang to keep the black to just to top of the body)

Painting the other bodies

Now the red with the top of the 1988 masked off so I didn't paint onto the black

I did write messages to Matthew on the bottom of them and dated them (with a permanent marker). It was a Happy Birthday message from Grandpop with love. I also wrote "Jesus Loves You!" And, I made sure to put who's cars they were copied from along with the make, model and year!

Funny related photo: While taking the main photo for this Blog Post (the one at the top), Toby (i.e. #TobyTheWonderDog who has his own blog) started playing with them! 

Here I am with #HollyTheFJ back in March when I visited my son

I had fun with this project. It was a fun surprise for everyone (especially his dad and uncles) and Matthew liked the cars. Now, hmmm, what should my next project be?