The Moran Family Tree
Crafty Little Me
Over this winter break I have been working on something
truly special for my family. A gift I wanted to be ready by Christmas but
unfortunately it wasn’t. With the passing of one of our family members Blackie
(my cat), I was struck with some inspiration! I wanted to honor Blackie for
coming into our lives, and being part of our family, the Moran family.
I took it as my mission to show people the special members
who make up the Moran family. My project was to create our family tree.
You know you have a great idea when it comes to you in the
most random times. This idea came to me in the middle of the night while I was
away at school. So inspired by my idea, it would be obvious to those who know
me, that the next chance I got to go to Michael’s, I did, and I conquered! I
bought all the materials needed for my project. I bought a long/tall canvas,
which I though would help bring out the tree idea. Of the paints I bought I
tried to stick to somewhat soft pastel colors for the background and some for
the painted pedals. I obviously needed a bold color for the tree itself, so I
stuck with black paint. To add more of the 3 dimensional aspect to the canvas I
also bought these small little silver picture frames as well as some fabric
flower pedals. I wanted my tree to have some pretty cute flowers on it!
After all the shopping, it was finally time to bring this
piece of blank white canvas to life! I painted the canvas with Crafts Smart
Light Green paint. They didn’t have the big paint bottle so I had to buy 2
small ones. After the background was finally painted and dried, it was time to
sketch the tree outline on the canvas. The trees I draw, my mom really admires
and loves them. Her reason being that she finds the way I draw the roots
unique. Once I was satisfied with the final sketch of the tree it was time to
paint it in!
As I mentioned before I wanted to use a bold color for the
tree and that is why I wanted black rather than brown. Also because I just
didn’t like the idea of brown. So at the moment I had both the background and
the tree painted, it was ready for some colorful flower pedals! The way I
created the painted pedals was very simple. I simply took an old plastic bottle
and dabbed it in each of the pastel colors and stamped it on different areas of
the braches. See it doesn’t sound hard. Now with the fabric flower pedals I
just hot glued them where I thought they looked best. I used a few pedals
because I didn’t want to over due the tree with too many pedals. Now I was
finally ready for the silver picture frames. I went to CVS to first develop the
pictures of my Mom, Dad, Alina, Blackie and myself. The picture frames I got (as
I mentioned before) at Michael’s. Gluing the frames was a little bit tricky
because after I removed the glass and the back to the frame, the hot glue would
kind of drip of the sides of the edge, which was quite thin. I had to glue fast because the glue
would dry and harden quickly, which made it a race-against-time type of
situation I guess haha!
VOILA!!!!!! The Moran Family Tree was finally complete! I
must say that this has been one of my most cherish-able works of art ever. I
say this because to my family and I, this tree shows our family, even though
with Blackie’s death this is still what our family tree looks like to this day.
I remember stepping back after I was done and just smiling from ear to ear. It
was a great feeling of accomplishment. And now it hangs proudly where everyone
can see it when they walk into our house! It may not be much, but it’s a Tamara
work of art =)
