Family Rules Canvas

This is an unusual post from This Reading Mama, but I get so many comments on my family rules canvas that I thought I’d write about it.  Teaching reading is only one of my loves.  Another close second would be decorating.  So maybe this is not too far off from these two passions, because it incorporates both :).

I first saw this idea at a friend’s house in her kitchen and fell in love with it.  So much so, that I decided to make my own.  Mine hangs close to the front door, but beside my kitchen.  I won’t lie and tell you that it was a quick project.  It took me weeks to get the finished product, but part of that may have been because I’m Type A (and that I was working around 3 kids’ schedules).  But I will tell you that it was easy.

Here is the finished product: Our Family Rules Canvas

My canvas reads:

Our Family Will…

• Forgive freely
• Have a grateful heart
• Be quick to listen
• Respect and obey authority
• Work together kindly
• Speak the truth in love
• Encourage one another
• Love with gentleness
• Share our many blessings
• Pray about everything
• Trust God no matter what

To figure out how to accomplish this craft, I typed in “Family Rules Canvas” on Google images.  You can view so many this way, but I think the origin of the idea belongs to The Pleated Poppy.  She has step-by-step directions; which are awesome.

The only difference (that I remember) from her steps on how to make it was that I didn’t “eyeball” my fonts (#6).  I didn’t trust my own handwriting.  I landscaped (print settings) a Word document and typed my sayings in different fonts.  Here is my original Word document: Family Rules Canvas.  Feel free to use and change for your needs.  Just a side note: “Pray about everything.” is not on the Word document; I added that one after I realized that the Modge Podge had shrunk the scrapbook paper a bit and I had about 1/2 an inch of extra room.  I then printed them out onto copy paper, cut them apart, & taped them together to get my rules to be wide enough for my canvas.  (My canvas is a 22×28 and I allowed for 1 inch of border all around.)

I used a permanent black marker to trace the words onto scrapbook paper via the light from the sun through a window (an old teacher trick).  This part was the most time consuming because I wanted the patterns on the scrapbook paper to line up when I pasted them together, so I had to really measure and map out exactly where I wanted the words to go to make this happen.

At first, I was very disappointed with the finished product when I could see all of the lines where my paper was joined and the Modge Podge had shrunk it.  I cried to my husband, “It looks homemade.  I didn’t want it to look homemade.”  He came back with, “That’s why I love it so much…because it looks homemade.”  (Don’t I have such a wonderful husband?)  I’ve loved it ever since.  And I’ve been asked MANY, MANY times, “Where did you buy this?” 🙂

So there you have it.  A little bit of literacy mixed with some decorating as well.

Thanks for joining This Reading Mama on a literacy journey.

~Becky