My Family Tree

I fell in love with some family tree murals on Pinterest (such as here and here) and determined I would personalize one for my own home.

I painted the tree on our staircase wall.  If you're not an artist, don't be afraid of tackling this project.  Branches are very forgiving, they don't have to be in any particular place.

Next I borrowed my sister's Cricut machine to design the leaves.  I inserted the names of the kids' Grandparents, cousins and aunts/uncles as well as our own immediate family then just added blank leaves to fill up the rest of the space.  The most time consuming part was by far the placing of the named leaves because you have to be so careful with all the little colored dots for the middle of letters.

I used cheap, simple frames (found at Walmart), because I wanted the pictures to be framed in by the artwork, not covering it up too much.

I found lots of lovely quotes that would have been fitting to add to my mural, but finally decided on this one:

Here is the final product:

I love that my kids know who their great grandparents are, even though they rarely see them, because we have their pictures hanging in our hallway.

And in case anyone is interested in the process of painting the tree:  I used all one color for the base, then added some texture/bark looking wavey lines in a darker brown while the tan color was still wet so that they would blend in well.

Here is the tree minus the leaves and most of the photographs.