Family Picture Art

I saw a really cute idea for a family portrait on a blog that I came across via Pinterest, that did a similar idea to the project below. This afternoon, my son and I did this project together in just a few minutes. We love to do projects together, and it will be something that I will cherish forever.

First, I had my son carefully draw a family portrait onto a square canvas, simply using a Sharpie marker.( I used a few items that were laying on the kitchen table to rope off the top portion of the canvas!)

Then I used my Cricut machine to cut out the letters. This, frankly was the hardest part of the project. I have never had much success with cutting letters with the Cricut. The letters always rip and/or the Cricut makes random cuts across the letters. It may have been just as easy to print them on Word and cut them out by hand! But I have a Cricut cartridge "Sophisticated," that had the phrase "Family is Forever" as a premade option, and since I always say that particular phrase to my son, I decided to use it. It would also be cute to have the family last name at the top, or any other phrase you can think of.

Then I used a repositionable glue stick to glue the letters on. I didn't want to use my usual spray adhesive because I wanted to be able to reposition the letters if needed. Even so, they weren't centered perfectly. I should have used a ruler in retrospect. This is the first time I've tried gluing lettering, so now I will know that tip for next time!

After gluing the letters, I painted over the entire canvas, including the sides, with Anita's Semi-Gloss Varnish. I'm sure that Modpodge would have worked also.

Once it's dry, I will add it to our hallway gallery of black and white photos. I'm sure that it will make a wonderful addition to our family memory wall.