Sunday, November 15, 2009

Family Values Canvas

I just completed a project that I am very proud of! I was very inspired by a Family Rules canvas that I saw at The Pleated Poppy a few months ago. After a few weeks of thinking about it, I stumbled across it again and was even more inspired when I saw the others who ran with her inspiration and made their own and then posted a link to theirs in her comments. If you like this project, you have to check out her original canvas as well as all the others as everyone has put their own twist on it! The link to her post is~
Here is the canvas I made. I called it Berkoben Family Values because we have had many talks in my family about living by certain values. I know some of these are 'rules' but whatever! My friend Lisa was interested in making one too so we did it together and think we may have 30-35 hours of working as well as several bottles of wine involved in this project! It was so much fun to do this with someone else and I recommend you do the same!
Our Family Values (Rules) are:
We Work Together
Be Creative At All Times
Jesus First, Others Second, Yourself Last
Listen to Others
Share Everything . . . Except Bad Ideas and Germs (Lisa is a nurse so we had to add Germs!)
Family First
Hold Up Your Head
Sing Silly, Laugh Often, Dance Silly, Smile, Say I love you
Always Show Respect
Encourage Each Other
Be Your Unique Self
Have Integrity

Here is a close up of a part of it. I love the black dots on the last one! Everything I did was printed on a laser printer or from my Cricut with some details added on like chipboard or rub ons to keep it interesting!
My favorite saying on my canvas is Hold Up Your Head. It is a subtle nod to my 10 year old who is on the autistic spectrum. You may know that the puzzle piece is the symbol for autism awareness and I love how it speaks to a main goal we have for him, which is confidence, though many may look at this and not know what it means to us.

I had lots of fun with this chipboard swirl though it did make getting the layout correct a bit complicated!

A few people have asked me where I put this so I took a picture while standing in my dining room so you could see! It is 12x24" and fits great on this wall. I love how from this spot you can see all the colors that are throughout my house-red, green, tan and yellow. This pop of creativity ties all the colors together quite well!

My friend Lisa's board is hanging in her kitchen. You can see that we did our own unique thing but also stuck with a few great sayings that worked and shared some paper! You only need a strip of a great piece of paper so this project is great to do with friends as you can share !

Here is a picture I took after the 2nd day of work. One thing that I noticed on some other boards was the seams if the canvas was wider than 12". I'm kinda a type A freak and couldn't handle that, though I DO like how the wider boards look! But I couldn't deal with the seam so that is why I bought a canvas that is only 12" wide-just something to think about if you decide to do this! Look at the MESS we made! My friend's board is on the left and mine is on the right. You can see how we had our papers chosen and laid out so we could estimate the space we were using and then we would pick one sheet and saying to work on and just kept going until we were done!

Here is mine hours before I finished. I just had the header left and some of the chipboard details that I put off until the end so I could finalize the colors that I wanted to use on them. It was quite exciting seeing it come together!

I am one who likes to CONTROL everything I do and modpodge has a mind of its own so that part was a bit stressful but it worked out just fine! I was very cautious to get each piece down as flat as possible and we also sealed each piece with a spray sealer to help make the paper less porous.
This was very fun and rewarding to make and I really want to thank Lindsey for sharing it on her blog and Nicole for creating this unique project!

post signature