Creating Your Own Family Rules Painting
I've seen a lot of those "Family Rules" signs on Pinterest lately, so I decided it was time I made one for our family. However, I soon discovered that the signs I really liked were either (a) for sale or (b) made with vinyl letters that required owning a Cricut or Silhouette. Well, since I have yet to win one of those, I was out of luck. (I'm hoping Santa thinks I've been a really good year in 2013 though.)
I didn't want to buy a sign because I wanted it to be totally personalized for our family with every rule being ideal to our values we are trying to instill in our children. And, let's face it, I'm cheap. I figured if I was going to make my own, I had better look at all the possible rules various signs list and compile my own list. Here are fifty. Yup, fifty. I narrowed our list down to nine based on priorities and space. I then headed to Hobby Lobby to purchase a canvas, some black and antique white paint, and more stencils. I figured I'd do the lettering the same why I did for my Trick or Feet sign.
I guess the most challenging part of this sign is the layout. Once I selected the rules I wanted represented, I had to make sure they would all fit on the designated canvas. To do this, I decided on the layout and size of each rule, whether it would be painted with one of the two one-inch fonts or the two-inch font. I then typed them onto word using Word Art with font as similar to my stencils as possible and tried out various options until I found one I liked. This just seemed easier than doing it by hand. It wasn't to scale, of course, but it gave me a good idea of how it would work.
Next, I painted my entire canvas black and let that dry as I prepared my stencils. It would have been smarter to paint the canvas first and let it dry while I was playing around with my lettering on my computer.
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