Journey to His Past

My husband and I painted our living areas this summer a rich, warm, chocolate brown.  Upon completion, my eyes rested on the hallway wall to the bedrooms.  It was the perfect place for a gallery wall.  The average person would have looked for art prints to display.  Not me, I decided to hang family pictures.

With a little help from Pinterest, a project was born!  I went through my family pictures and decided which ones I wanted to hang.  I wanted to show the Leyndyke and Glover sides of the family.  I narrowed the final selections down to 29 photographs, one marriage certificate and one FAMILY photo letters hanging.

Here is the end result.

One of the projects I saw on Pinterest was to take a copy of a marriage certificate and decoupage it to the letter of your last name.  I had Kirk's grandparent's, Peter and Nellie Leyndyke, marriage certificate-so I gave it a try.  I printed a copy onto parchment paper, bought a letter "L'and went to work.

I positioned the certificate over the L in a way that one could tell it was a marriage certificate.  A part of their names wrap around the right side of the L.  I trimmed it to fit and decoupaged it.  Here is the end product.

Next, I ordered prints to frame.  Then, I took advantage of a Michael's sale and bought a few frames.  I spent days rearranging the pictures on top of two six foot tables.  Once I was happy with the arrangement I turned them upside down, placed wax paper on top of them, and marked where the nail needed to go.  Kirk nailed the wax paper to the wall, leveled it, and pounded the nails in for me.  He tore off the wax paper and hung the pictures.  The wax paper was a great way to keep everything in order.  I only made two mistakes, the nail for the L was on the wrong side and one of the smaller pictures had to be moved up.   The following Leyndyke family pictures are hanging proudly on our wall.  It is a reminder of where we have come from.