Preserve and display your Family Tree for the younger generations in this easy Family History Wall Art.
Every family has a history. A story to tell. One day, while thinking on this topic, I realized that my little daughter didn’t know much about our ancestors. I used supplies I had at home and made this Family History Wall Art
Learning our family history gives each of us a place in the family structure and explains where we came from, how we fit in and how the family has grown and changed over time. So out came the old ring albums with my parents’ photos. You probably have one album just like that too.
But with age, the album has disintegrated and all the photos have become fragile and have started to lose their color. That was when this project was born. Project :Protect our ancestors’ photographs and heritage in an archival safe way.
So for today, I have a tutorial to share with you; about preserving family history and its importance in kids lives. My little girl Nidhi is just two and half years old, so instead of making a family tree, (which I am sure to make once she is older and understands the word ‘cousin’) I chose to make a wall art of photos spanning 3 generations.
She can identify each of these photos and loves stopping by it and talking to me about the photos. For me, every time I walk past it, it reminds me of who I am, and how important these people have been in sculpting my life and how grateful I am for everything that they are.
How to make your Family History Wall Art
I scanned and resized the photos to measure 2 by 2 inches and then printed them at Costco. I could have recolored the photos so that they all looked similar, but I wanted to treasure the ancestry of these photos. They have been preserved and cherished for years now, and I wanted that love to show.
To begin, I chose an 8 by 10-inch canvas and primed it with white acrylic paint.
While the paint was still wet, I spritzed the canvas with some yellow mist and patted into the canvas. I let it dry for a couple of hours. This will make the canvas looked a bit aged.
Once the canvas dried, I chose few patterned papers and punched out 2.25-inch squares from them using the new 3X lever punches. I then arranged them onto the canvas. I matted them with cream cardstock and inked all the edges with some brown ink. I also ran the inkpad along the edges of the canvas to distress it a bit.
I scanned our entire ancestor’ photographs, and using a photo editing software, added a title to each photo. I then printed my photos and trimmed them to size.
You could instead include your handwriting and write who is in the photograph using an archival-safe pen. I added a couple of blocks without photos, as decorative blocks to add some interest to the canvas. For these, I used squeeze punches and buttons. I then adhered all my photo squares onto the canvas using glue dots.
I finally added the title “family” and added some cardstock beneath it and ran a strip of burlap to finish the canvas. I cut the V shape from cardstock using the Microtip scissor and then used a regular pencil to give a slight curl to it.
All done!
Here is a photo of the completed project.
To document our family history, I chose to make this family wall art canvas. This project can easily be modified into a scrapbook layout that would go into an album. I wanted the photographs displayed up on the wall, so that my daughter could see them often and we could talk about the people in the photographs.
I am a Scrapbooker at heart. And the main reason I, or anyone for that matter, scrapbooks is so that they can preserve the memories; have photos, and journal in an album, documenting their everyday life. We thus create a record of our family history for our kids and future generations to come; something for them to remember us by in the far far future.
This tutorial was originally published on the Fiskars.com
Hi I’m Smitha! I live in Minnesota with my husband and two daughters. You’ll always find me painting florals in my sketchbook. And I love the sheer joy of making something with just my hands! But my bigger love is capturing it all on camera Read more.
Thanks for stopping by today! If you learnt something from this tutorial, do share this post with a friend or on social media! Tag me @smithakatti #smithakatti I’d love to see what you create!
