DIY: Heart Arms Collage

This year my children and I made the Mother's Day present I've been waiting a decade to make. I saw a similar picture ten years ago and wanted to do one myself, and my children are old enough now to make it happen.

Here's the picture we made:

We had loads of fun making the picture, so here's a quick How-To guide if you're wondering what we did:

1. Layout
   Even though I know how to use PhotoShop and GIMP, my go-to quick-and-dirty photo arranging program is PowerPoint. (I know, right?) I like that I can quickly add shape objects, arrange them, and then snap pictures to the shapes I use as a guide. I also like to show my children how to use PowerPoint to arrange pictures, alter images, and make drawings.
   
   Anyway, the first thing I did was design what I wanted the final picture to look like. Since I have four children, I wanted the number of contributing images to be divisible by four, so my grid is 6x6 (6 x 6 = 36 = 9 x 4, nine pictures of each child). Here's the grid, made of squares and a heart shape:
   
   
   
   Since there would be nine shots of each child, I made a list of nine smiles they could make so that each child's pictures didn't all look the same. Then I distributed my children and their smiles around the grid (I used colors and labels on the grid squares so I could quickly see if the distribution appeared random but that there weren't two pictures of the same child next to each other):
   
   
   

   
   NOTE: If you're using a lot of objects/images in PowerPoint, consider using the Selection Pane to keep track of what is selected. Very helpful if you need to move images to the front/back but are having trouble clicking on them because they're buried under another image. Also, you can give the objects names in the Selection Pane to help you know what is what. You can find the Selection Pane here (in PowerPoint 2007 and later): Home Tab | Editing Group | Select drop-down | Selection Pane.
   
2. Photo Shoot
   Since this is a DIY project, we grabbed a sheet, some clamps, and a printout of the design and headed to the back yard! (The printout was so the children could see what smile to make and how to position their arm) This photo shows the behind-the-scenes magic of our setup—notice the sheet clamped to the swing set chains:
   
   
   
   You might need to gently guide the arm position of little children, too:
   
   
   
3. Assemble, Arrange, and Align
   With all the pictures taken, we headed back inside where the children played while I assembled the pictures and arranged them. Although you can crop images in PowerPoint, I used Microsoft's Photo Gallery program (because it's free) to crop each image to a square and apply the auto-correct for colors (our camera is getting old and needs a little help).
   
   I moved the pictures into PowerPoint, arranged them on the grid, and cropped them a little more so the faces were about the same size and the arms were where the heart shape showed.
   
   NOTE: Some of the pictures needed to be rotated so the arms matched the heart shape. Once you rotate a picture in PowerPoint, the crop is along the rotated axes so it doesn't align with the grid. There might be an easier way, but to make them align: I rotated the image in PowerPoint, drew a white rectangle behind the image, selected both, did a Copy | Paste as Picture, then cropped the result to a square. Here is an example of some that were rotated, showing the white rectangle, too:
   
   
   
   After the pictures are all in place and rotated appropriately, I fine-tuned the positioning, using the original red grid and heart shape as a guide:
   
   
   
4. Done!
   The final step was to delete the grid and heart shape, select all the pictures, and save the result as a picture (right-click and choose Save as Picture). Then you can print/frame it and/or share it on social media!
   
   
   
   She likes it!
   
   

DIY: Door Painting, III

The younger boys loved their door so much that the oldest boy wanted his door painted right away. Luckily they have a nice daddy who can throw tape and paint on doors quickly. Here's the final door to the children's rooms (the color is orange, but it was getting quite dark when we finished so the pictures aren't great):

His name starts with D, as you can see

DIY: Door Painting, II

My wife and son went off to play at Lion Country Safari today (link). This left me home alone over lunch, so I did a quick DIY project to surprise the boys when they come home. They loved the door my daughter and I painted (see it here), and I think they'll love their door, too.

HINT: their names start with B and A,
and their favorite colors are blue and green, respectively

DIY: Laminate Flooring

The carpet in our house was old and very worn, so we've started ripping it out. Most of the house now has bare concrete (that we've cleaned), but we've started covering it with laminate flooring. Our recent bathroom vanity renovation (link) included replacing the carpet in the vanity with laminate floors, and the flooring has now spread to the master closet.

Here's a look at a before/after:

And by the way, I say these projects are DIY, but I do have help! My two older children took turns helping with this one, and my wife helped, too (as always).

DIY: Window Writing

Our weekly family nights don't always move far from the dining room table. When we need to outline something well, we use the windows! 

Whiteboard markers work just fine on windows, by the way:

And the window writing is good for helping practice tough spelling words, too!

DIY: Stained Glass

We had an open house for our temple and I wanted to do something fun to memorialize the great feelings. I chose stained glass, well pretend stained glass (here's the how-to I refered to: link).

To practice, I first did a CTR shield

Here's the temple

I wanted the sides of my stained glass to match actual stained glass from inside the temple, as below

DIY: Felt Song Helpers

I was a singing time leader at our church for a couple of years. I made these fun visual aids to help the children learn the words to a song we sang to mothers on Mother's Day. Here's the song: link.

Like sunshine in the morning that wakens day from night,
Like flowers in the springtime so colorful and bright,
Like happy songs of bluebirds that fill the air with cheer,
A person bright and lovely is my mother dear.

Each sheet is about 8x11:

DIY: Family Shirts

My amazing wife used stencils to make personalized shirts for our brood the other summer. The shirts looked great, and the little ones loved wearing them. Here are a few pictures from different adventures where the children coordinated their outfits:

DIY: Shell-Lined Walk

We used the shells we've been collecting from our beach trips to line the back patio pavers. It looks cute, and we add more each time we have another beach day.

DIY: Porch Ceiling

This fdaone's still in process, but we had popcorn ceiling in the screened-in porch that was worse than what was in the house. The drywall was sagging from the humidity, so I took an hour and ripped it all out!

Now I'm wanting to clean it and paint the exposed wood (plus add a pull-up bar).

Here's what it looks like now:

DIY: Popcorn Ceiling Removal

Another relic of the 70's is popcorn ceilings. Ours were looking dark and gross (maybe our imagination), so I systematically went around the house and removed it all! Smoothing the bare ceiling with joint compound, adding a lighter texture, priming, and painting yielded a cleaner ceiling.

Removing only involved using a handheld pump sprayer (with water), spraying the ceiling, then scraping the popcorn off with a wide putty knife. And don't worry, we checked for asbestos first!

Here's a fun picture of one of the rooms being done.

DIY: Children's Pillow Covers

We saw cute square pillows at IKEA for $2, so we bought one for each child. Using some clearance fabric and scraps we had on hand, my amazing (and beautiful) wife pulled out the sewing machine to teach the older children how to sew. Here is the process and the results:

Lesson

Another lesson

Finished products (the backs are cute, too: they have a complimentary color with a strip of fabric that matches the front)

DIY: Painted Everything

There was a week a couple of years ago when I wanted to paint everything. Here's a few of the quick projects that resulted:

The old backyard birdbath, painted with latex exterior paint

Mailbox gets a touch-up with spray paint

Thrift store mirror looks snazzy after meeting the spray paint

DIY: ModPodge Canvas Art

We love ModPodge because it makes beautiful done-in-a-day canvas art. My wife's parents are in Japan on a church mission for a while, so we made some Japan-themed canvas art for the children's rooms, and ours, too!

All you have to do is print the picture on regular paper, paint the sides of the canvas a fun color, ModPodge the canvas, carefully lay the paper down (cut to fit), then ModPodge over the top of the paper.

Showing their favorite prints

Here's our collection of 8x10s in our room

DIY: Halloween Fun

My wife is great at coming up with fun ideas. Here's something from the lead-up to Halloween: a sheet, a light, and cute cut-outs!

It was a hit

DIY: Square Foot Garden

My wife found a book on a quick backyard garden (here), so we built a couple!

Just a little lumber and soil, and we're off!

Garden so nice, we built it twice

Here it is a couple years later, still giving us green food

DIY: Front Landscaping

The ficus hedges on the front and side of our house caught some disease, so we jumped at the chance to change the look!

Here are some before/afters and other pretty pictures:

We removed a hibiscus bush and planted this combination of flowers, sweetsop (sugar apple) tree, and raspberries. The part by the house has miracle fruit, pineapples, crotons, roses, and aztec grass.

Did you know you can paint concrete benches (and birdbaths) with exterior latex paint? We do now!

The side of the house got an update, too! This part has blackberries, soursop tree, bananas, miracle fruit, and crotons.

DIY: Front Door Update

The front door of our house had an ... interesting... feature in the front window. I guess it was the thing to do in the 70's, but we wanted to have more light in the entryway, so out it came! Once removed, we cleaned the glass and put a patterned contact paper on.

Here's a quick before/after followed by a couple funny afters:

One of our friendly front-yard lizards on the other side of the glass

Our little ones don't like to wear clothes at home, but they love the added light!

DIY: Hair Accessory Frame

My daughter's hair accessories were starting to get out of control, so we made a frame with parts we had in the garage.

These included:

• molding (cut to the frame)
• pegboard (backing)
• chicken wire
• mug hooks

She wasn't really feeling well when this was taken, but she does like it!

Finished and loaded

A closer look

DIY: Door Painting

This was a fun afternoon project that my eight-yr-old daughter really liked helping me design. She also had fun helping with the tape.

Here's our progress collage:

And since our floors are bare concrete (we're slowly putting down laminate flooring), we have a great canvas for the extra paint!