Creativity 521 #110 - Our family tree

Family
Like branches on a tree
We all grow in different directions
Yet our roots remain as one
Always and forever

I've forgotten how good and therapeutic it felt to do up an art piece or a DIY project. Yup, it's been a long while but I've been wanting to get our hands back on art and craft after settling down in the new house. Well, I'm just glad we finally did, even if it was something so simple that took us less than a couple of hours.

So, you know by now that we have a Scandinavian theme for our new house (you can go on a tour around the house here) since it is very close to our hearts. Scandinavian makes me think of wood, and wood makes me think of trees. I wanted to do up a decorative, personalised art piece for the living room just to jazz things up a little and in wanting to make it simple yet meaningful, we didn't do just a tree.

We did our FAMILY TREE using our hands, in a literal sense, and here's showing you how we did it in today's Creativity 521. This makes an ideal gift for anniversaries and birthdays, and considering that both our wedding anniversary and my birthday lie in the month of April, I think it was the perfect time to do this.

Materials:

1) Painting supplies
2) Drawing block
3) Markers
4) Optional: Picture frame
5) Hands of every family member

Yes, you read that right. We need everyone's hands to form a family tree.

Firstly, choose your desired colour, hopefully a different one for every member of the family. Add a little water to the paint, but not make it overly, so that it is easier for you to brush the paint onto your palm. Make sure you fill up every nook and cranny and to make it more fun, get the kid to help you paint yours.

Play around with colours and let the kids learn about how mixing them can give you new colours too. The little sister was happy to find out how she could get purple colour from red and blue, and the big sister helped to add some white to make the shades of our colours lighter too.

The best part of this session was actually painting on the kids' hands and hearing their incessant laughter. Yup, not sure why they felt so ticklish but it made me happy to see them happy. Now, design the handprints to be placed on the paper in such a way that it resembles, to an extent, the canopy of a tree. It's okay to overlap the prints (I think they look better this way) but just make sure that every print is vivid and has its place.

No points for guessing who I worried about the most because I wasn't sure if he/she would cooperate, give me the hand or hold still for a few seconds. It turned out that this darling took everything in his stride and not only let us paint his palm (he did try to squeeze his fingers and close his fist a few times), but also gave me enough time to press it down firmly onto the drawing block. Thank you thank you!

While the kids were asleep, I carried on with the second part and that was painting a tree trunk with branches. I did that using different shades of orange and brown, and painted branches that were joined to the handprints too.

Next, I wrote the word Family using markers and a powerful quote to accompany it. Nope, it's not original but I find it meaningful and like it lots after reading it once, so I had to copy it.

Lastly, I wrote our names on our handprints just to make it truly our own.

So here's how it looks in the end! Not too bad, right? Well, indeed it does brighten up the living room and we are definitely loving this colourful, unique and meaningful family tree of ours. Cheers to family!

For more DIY tutorials and craft inspiration, visit my gallery here.