Family tree

Now that Christmas is over and the presents have been exchanged, I can share some of the items that I worked on for gifts.  They are largely the result of my new found pinterest site...and surprisingly,  some ideas became more than just ideas on a computer screen or pins on my many boards.

They made it creation and are hanging on my (and others!) walls. I made three of these from our hand prints and both sets of our parents got one, and of course I had to make one for us!

The original idea can be found here. Her writing looks so much more professional than mine, but hey...

I gathered my supplies, which included the following:

• Paint (assorted colors, which we already had from my maternity pictures with Jacey when the kids colored on my belly)
• Paint Pens (which I didn't have, but this was the same shopping trip as when I got them for the Reindeer ornaments and the Grinch ornaments, so I just needed them in brown and black, which were the same colors as for those two projects)
• Frames (this was the trickier one....I needed a large frame for this, and as you know, those can get pricey, even with coupons.  However, Big Lots had their collage frames on sale, and although I didn't need the collage frame, the size worked out perfectly.  So I snagged 3 frames for what 1 would have cost me at Hobby Lobby).
• Poster board (I was making 3 total family trees)
• Foam brushes for the paint (a package with assorted sizes was just a little less than $3)

I measured the size of the frame insert, then cut the poster board to the correct size.  Then I worked on drawing a tree that didn't look like a hand (like she writes, it really is harder than it sounds). I used a paint pen in brown and colored it in.

I then grabbed each kiddo individually, let them pick out their color, painted their hand with a foam brush, and we placed their hand print onto the poster board.  Let me just say, with each successive hand print, my perfectionist self got more and more nervous about something messing up.

I did the older two kids, then mine, grabbed my hubby (he's such a trooper!!) and did his, and we left the baby for last.

I let each of the hand prints dry, then penciled in the wording.  Once I was comfortable with the spacing of the words, I went over the words with the black paint pen.

Let everything dry really well....then framed the masterpieces!

I did end up taking these out of the frames and putting the year in the corner...didn't think about that at the time.

And they were BIG hits as gifts.