Today I am bringing you yet a another home decor idea combing two of my favorite things, family photos and quotes.  This wall art project involves a sequence of pictures of our family holding hands and leaping into a leaf pile and a quote that fit’s it perfectly.  Combing them together in a cluster of canvases makes for a personalized and inspiring pieces of home decor that is symbolic and a great daily reminder of what is most important to our family, each other!

It’s an obsession, I know, and sometimes I feel like the walls in our home are talking to me because of all the word art – but, I like it that way.  I like that the decor in our home inspires me on a daily basis, and if it doesn’t why bother having it, right?  Last fall we had a family photo shoot at the perfect time of the year.  The fall colors were perfect and we got some great shots.  When we were all finished we decided to play in a giant leaf pile we had raked earlier in front of our home, and the camera was still shooting.

We got a great sequence of photos of our family holding hands and leaping into the leaves together.  I found the pictures fascinating, adorable, and they made me just plain happy to look at.  I found a deeper meaning to the photos the longer I studied them.

Looking closely at the photos I could see the kids expressions turn from excited to run and jump in, to nervous right before the leap, to joy after safely landing in the pile holding our hands.  I found the pictures to be symbolic to life in general as a family, and once I found this quote by Audry Hepburn :  “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.”  I was inspired.

It reminded me that although things haven’t always been easy for our little family, that we have always…always held hands and ran through whatever it was together.  No matter what our situation has been, even if we were scared, we would hold each others hands and take that big old leap of faith together.  We had faith that we would come out of it on the other end all holding hands and smiling.  Memories of the more difficult times in our lives are sometimes hard to bear, but when you think of it a little differently, you are just thankful that you have a beautiful family to hold onto and help you make it through.  It puts it all in perspective and magnifies the good times.  Difficult times make your entire family, stronger, more empathetic, and closer together.  When it comes down to it, the only things that really matter are each other, and with a little faith, you might come out a better, stronger, and a happier person after the leap is over.

So anyway, that is how I  got inspired to make and share this project.  I wanted to find a way to incorporate it all into our home.

I started this project almost a year ago, and am a bit embarrassed that it took so long to come together, but… life happens.  Last winter I found a great deal on some faux photo canvases at Walmart.  I showed you another quote on canvas that I made for my daughter’s room last year using this product if you would like more information about it.  At the time they were a new product, and I took full advantage of the $10 deal that they had at the time.  I got my sequence of pictures put onto canvas for $10 each.  The fourth canvas was actually a mistake on their part but I took it anyway and that’s how the idea of adding the quote came about.  I had the goofed up photo canvas for $5.00 and decided I would paint it and add a quote to my sequence of pictures.   I used a great trick that I learned on Pinterest from the Brassy Apple  to add my quote to canvas using stickers (or in my case vinyl decals).

• I first had to paint my canvas white because it had a goofed up photo on it, but you can just buy a plain old canvas (or grab one from Goodwill and paint over it) and add the stickers straight to it.  The color of the words will end up being whatever the base color of the canvas is – so make it whatever color you want your words to be.
• Next I placed my cut out quote onto the canvas.   Position it however you want it to appear when you are finished.  I used my Cricut machine to cut out my quote out of vinyl and then stuck it to my canvas.  You could use scrapbook stickers, or thick card stock as long as you are careful that everything stays in place.
• After my vinyl quote was stuck onto my canvas I then painted the entire canvas again.  I coated the canvas, right over the vinyl lettering, with two thin coats of black spray paint.
• After the paint dried completely I was able to easily peel of the vinyl letters to reveal a perfectly painted quote on my canvas.

This was really a quick and easy way to add my quote to the canvas, and the results were perfect.  The letters appeared neat and tidy – more so than any hand painted or traced letters I have tried so far.  This technique worked great for this project, and I was really happy with the end result.

I was then ready to put all 4 of my canvases together and find the perfect spot in the house for them.  I wasn’t quite sure what arrangement I wanted for the pictures and the quote.   I decided to rearrange them in a few different configurations and then take pictures so that I could compare and have a good visual.

This was a great way to decided which way I liked them set out best before putting holes in the wall to hang them.  I decided to go for a square configuration with the quote right before the picture of us leaping into the pile of leaves.

Once I had decided then I could just measure and carefully hang the canvas together.  I’m loving the combination of the sequence of photos and the quote together and think this wall art is the perfect thing for our family to look at each time they are heading out of the house for the day.