Two Become One

About two weeks ago, I had a pretty sleepless night. I wrote an amazingly coherent blog post and, for the first time ever, came up with a project that actually made sense!

Our February Blog With Friends Challenge theme is "Love is in the Air" and my very tired brain took the air part literally. Inspired by all the house hunting I've been doing, I came up with a plan that involved a bird's eye view of love. More specifically bringing two homes together to create one.

For this project you will need:

• a canvas (you can use a sheet of cardboard, or poster board too)
• paint
• cut out letters/words
• brushes
• ModPodge/glue
• Google map pictures of previous homes 

I printed out pictures of the home I grew up in in Radford and asked Ken what he considered to be his childhood home. For people that have moved around a bit, there's really no wrong answer. Go with whatever feels right to you. I had a hard time deciding what to print for the third picture. It didn't seem right to choose the place we are currently living, as it's only a temporary rental. It didn't seem right to choose the place we've been considering, because that's not a done deal and I didn't want to jinx anything. Ultimately, I chose the house we had just sold. The house we started our family in and lived in for 14 years. When we move, I'll update this artwork with a new picture, right on top of the old one, because that home will always be in our hearts.

I used the Cricut at work to cut out the letters for TWO and ONE, as well as the word become, but you could free hand cut them, paint them, or print them out. Again, use what you have access to.

After I had all my supplies together, I laid out some newspaper on the table and painted my canvas blue. I added some white into the paint and blended it together to give it a little more interest. I let that paint dry overnight.

I cut out a heart template and used this to cut the map of our home together into a heart shape. I centered the little red map marker in the middle of the heart. Then I cut my template in two pieces like a puzzle piece. Using this template I cut out the shape for my childhood home and Ken's, being careful to take note of where the map marker was.

I used a bit of leftover red paper to delineate the space between the puzzle pieces (otherwise, you couldn't really tell there were two different maps there) and glued them together. Once I had everything laid out, I decided that the word become didn't stand out enough, so I tore up an old map and put it underneath.

After everything was laid out the way I wanted it, I went back and used Mod Podge to glue the pieces down. This will give it a nice even finish and hold the pieces together without being sticky.

I've hung this artwork in the dining room behind our table and it's been sweet to hear the kids talk about it. I'm excited to move it into a new home and update our heart once we get settled.

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