The Pond Family: FAMILY wall art

My husband and I converted a room in our house into the playroom a few months ago so I was looking for fun family-centered art ideas for the walls. The first thing we did was to buy a few canvases and give our then 2-year-old daughter some acrylic paints and then we turned her loose. What resulted were two beautifully painted "modern" art pieces that are now proudly displayed on the walls of the playroom. However, for above the fireplace I wanted something a bit more uniform. I stumbled upon a web site that had an idea for FAMILY wall art. Here are the supplies you'll need if you want to make your own.

Canvas
Acrylic Paints (I used the $1.00 tubes from AC Moore in coordinating colors that matched the color scheme of the playroom)
Vinyl wall letters (I had an impossible time locating the large letters at AC Moore and ended up buying them at Michael's)
Ruler

I had my husband use a pencil & ruler to lightly draw a straight line for the FAMILY letters. Keep in mind some letters are wider than others so the center of “family” isn’t necesarily between the “m” & the “i”.
STEP TWO: Affix the letters to the canvas and seal the edges with a bit of Elmer's glue.
STEP THREE: Paint! Enlist the members of your family to paint their handprints, dogprints or catprints. When you’re stamping your handprints, try to push directly against the letters and not push them sideways or peel up any corners. Be sure to cover the entire canvas several times over. You need to let each layer dry before making another and another. The more the better! Globs add texture so get messy!

We did the background work in dark, somewhat neutral colors so they’d anchor the piece. Navy, Maroon & Grey for the most part. Once the painting was well-covered I had my daughter do more hot pink handprints and my son did his in lime green. Those two colors really popped against the darker smudgier prints.