DIY Family Tree Wall

I wanted to share with everyone my awesome family tree wall that my husband and I made for our hallway last year.

This is by far my favorite project that we have done together. I was looking around on Pinterest and saw so many vinyl family trees, but they were just too small for us. So my ever-so-clever husband says "Why don't we just paint our own?" 

What a wonderful idea!

Isn't it awesome!!! I love this wall. Every time I walk by it I catch myself looking at all the pictures of our family. 

It was so easy to paint this that it really surprised me. Let me explain how we did it.

First we covered the whole wall with craft paper and my talented hubby drew up a tree with branches. Once he was happy with what he had, we took it down and cut out the tree, placing it back on the wall to make sure we were happy.

Next was the fun part of choosing a wall color. I was kind of nervous about this because I am not a bright color on the wall person, so when my hubby suggested a bright blue I was not hearing it. Boy, was I wrong! It came out amazing. 

So we took down our stencil and then painted the wall bright blue. We waited 24 hours for the blue to try because it just was not drying well enough to stick painters tape on it. Waiting for paint to dry is not too much fun at all, but after 24 hours we were ready to paint our tree. We put our stencil back up. 

This was the most difficult part. We took really good painter’s tape (don't skimp out on this) and taped around the tree. Don't worry too much about ends just yet, just make sure you get plenty of tape up to keep from painting on the wall paint. I forgot to get a picture of how it looked before we painted it. So hopefully you will be able to get the idea with the next photo of it painted.

 Once you have all your taping done go ahead and use your exacto knife and lightly cut out the tree stencil, removing it from the wall. Be careful with the cutting as you do want to cut through the tape, but not through the wall! Once you are happy with your negative of the tree, go ahead and paint the tree. 

We waited until the tree was completely dry and then carefully pulled off the painters tape. Be very careful, making sure that you don't pull any of the wall paint up. This is why it is very important to use the good painter’s tape. 

Once everything is pulled off, just go through and do some touch up painting to anything that looks like it didn't come out nicely. We had to do some minor touches in-between the branches and on some of the curves, they kind of looked more straight than a nice curve. 

This project was a nice weekend project that the hubby and I loved doing and we still love looking at it and adding new and old family photos to it. 

Maybe one of these days I will use the Cameo and put a nice family verse on the bottom corner. Here is to someday!