Friday, March 28, 2014

Family Painting Masterpiece

See this blank wall???


We needed something to fill that wall in our master bedroom. We've got plenty of family pictures around the house. Self-made art work fills the boy's big wall in their room. I could have painted a canvas myself, but I don't always enjoy staring at my own works of art. The staring turns into critiquing which would turn into me tearing it down (yes, this has happened before) and we're back at square one. We could have easily bought a new painting or something to fill the wall, but I was looking for something less expensive.

That's when I came up with the bright idea for a family art painting. I didn't have to think too hard about what was easiest for all of us to paint: Hand prints. All five of our hand prints covering a canvas. I have seen similar ideas on Pinterest and our hallway has yearly hand prints from the kids on square canvases so I had high hopes that it would work.

I went to Michael's and purchased this canvas for $14.99.
I wanted to buy one of the bigger canvases but I didn't, for fear that I would spend $40 and the kids would decide to make something other than hand prints.

I also purchased neon tempera paint. I somehow didn't think through the fact that the colors of our bedroom are blue hues and the neons totally wouldn't match. I didn't want to get any paint much stronger than tempera paint for fear that it wouldn't come off of the kid's hands (or legs, arms, feet, hair, face) or the floor (or cabinets, walls, a smidge on the carpet....you get the picture). I have had the kids use tempera paint for canvas paintings in the past and was happy with the results. I bought a pack of 6 small neon paint bottles and that was more than enough to get the hand prints done.

Each family member chose a color for their hand prints to be. We had one leftover color (blue in our case) and at the end, we each did a few hand prints in blue too.




There was A LOT of paint used thanks to an enthusiastic 5, 3, and 1 year old. It only took around 12 hours for the paint to dry but we waited 24 hours before we hung it on the wall. The finished product:




There were a couple of troubles trying to hang the canvas up......those trouble's names are Harrison and Elizabeth:



Ideally, I'd like to do a family art piece every year--our oldest suggested doing our feet next year. While it was a super messy family masterpiece, I absolutely love how it turned out. Of all of my masterpieces I've created, this is by far my favorite.