DIY Love // Lola's Family Nests

A short but sweet DIY to share with you today! As well as purchasing gifts for our families for Christmas last year, we made it our mission to create something special for them when we could. Particularly, when buying for our grandparents with an ever expanding family, we've found it's become increasingly difficult to buy them something unique!

Originally, designed as an alterative to wedding guestbooks, Lola first spotted across these amazing 'Finger Print Tree Guestbooks' on snaps from a wedding and thought it was such a fabulous idea. With no wedding invitations on the horizon, she decided to adapt this idea to make 'Family Nest' prints for her grandparents!

Here's a little step-by-step to how you can make them yourselves...

Firstly, after measuring card in your chosen colour (I went for a slightly off white) to fit your frame, draw out the outline for your tree. Bear in mind, you'll need lots of branches if you have a big family (this is why it's a good idea to do it in pencil first so you can play with the space you have!)

Once you're happy with your design go over in black ink - coloured if you're after a more vibrant print!



The idea for the orginial 'finger print tree guest book' is to get your wedding guests to each leave their fingerprint to represent the bird in the tree, but as my nests were to be gifts, I thought I'd complete the Family Nest with a family of birds! I found these rubber stamps on Ebay which included birdy couples & cute owls!



Then just stamp on your birds! Keep track of the number of birds/family members of you might end up with a few miscellaneous birds of your tree!

I wanted it to look really bright so I used acryllic paint to make a turquoise but it would probably work a lot better with an actual ink pad as it was a bit too thick for the delicately, engraved stamps.

I completed the pieces by writing everyone's name next to a bird (starting with my grandparents at the head of the tree and working down to parents, aunts & uncles, cousins etc) And that's all there is to it! The Family Nests look great mounted and framed and the best bit is... you can keep adding to it as your Family grows!

It's such a lovely idea for a personalised gift and my grandparents really loved them <3

Much love,
L&R xx