Last week I made a new toy for Katie Wynn. In all honesty, she's probably too young for it, but this toy is going to live at my parents' house and I have a feeling all of KW's cousins will enjoy playing with it too. It's the perfect thing for us to keep out in my Dad's woodshop so that when the adults are building or painting or refinishing, the kids have something to do.

The toy is a latch board, like this one that John and Sherry did on Young House Love.

I used a piece of scrap wood that we already had, so the only thing I had to buy for this project was a whole bunch of latches. I probably could've scrounged around the woodshop to find old ones but when I originally planned this it was gonna be a birthday gift for someone so I bought new ones. (And obviously I ended up buying something else for the birthday gift.) I chose to go with latches in different finishes to mix it up a little and I got them in bigger sizes than what John and Sherry used.

After cutting the scrap board down to size, my mom put two coats of paint (on both sides) on it for me. Then, the hardest part of this whole DIY was figuring out the arrangement of all the latches.

I had randomly grabbed this package of hook and eye closures to use in as filler if we needed them. I'm glad I did because we ended up using all three of them in blank spaces.

After getting the arrangement figured out, then it was just a matter of screwing them all in place. Easy peasy!

To finish it off, I adhered some small bumpers on the back so that the wood wouldn't scratch up any floors. I know I said this toy was for out in the shop but I couldn't resist taking it inside to see what my little girl thought of it.

So far it's a hit! And I think she'll only grow to love it more when she figures out how to work the harder latches. Right now, she's perfectly content with flipping the hinges back and forth. :) Yay for quick and easy projects!