Family Reunion Goodies

I haven’t even been to an official family reunion for about 15 years, but I was happy to accept the assignment of a family-reunion craft for my Heartland Paper design-team project this month. Now I know what I’ll do if I’m ever in charge of family-reunion crafts or favors.  🙂

I love vinyl mounted on glass, and thought it would be fun to make some coordinating drinks and treats to go with it. I chose this beautiful Indigo Bleu paper first, then went to my local thrift store and found this perfectly-colored 8″x10″ frame for 75 cents. If I wanted to make multiple frames I’d just buy a can of spray paint to make them all match. I lucked out with this single cute frame, though.

For the vinyl art I found two pieces of free clip art I liked, imported them as PNGs and traced them in Studio, then used the parts I wanted for this tree. I thought “Our Roots Run Deep” would be a nice family-reunion theme, so I incorporated that as well. I’ve made this full tree design with the words into a Studio file for you, which you can download by clicking on the image below. (You’ll have to add your own family name and date.) One word of advice: if you don’t like weeding vinyl, you won’t want to commit yourself to a bunch of these because of all the tiny little hearts. If you like the idea, you may wish to find a simpler tree shape and make your own similar design.

Here is the finished frame. I put a piece of Indigo Bleu pattern paper behind the glass, then mounted the vinyl on top of the glass. I like the floating look, but you can certainly put the vinyl directly on the paper and put it all behind glass. The “roots” sentiment is made with the font The World is Yours. The family name is from the font Honey Script, bold option.

I cut the clear box out with my Cameo from a letter-size clear presentation cover. The file is “Advent Box 8” from the Silhouette advent-calendar files available last fall/winter. It folds together so there’s no need for glue to show on the clear plastic. If you like the idea, you can buy clear little boxes online instead of making them. I like how the back sides of this pretty Indigo Bleu pattern paper show through. I covered the bottom of a bunch of Hershey’s Kisses with the coordinating pattern papers. 3/4″ circles are perfect for the base of a Hershey’s Kiss.

You can see I used the same tree as a printable image on the box label. It’s full opacity on the back side, but I made it transparent to layer under the words on the front label. You can do that in the advanced fill options in Studio’s Fill window.

I like the idea of also adding some family quotes into the box. Here are my favorites:
“Families are like fudge–mostly sweet with a few nuts.” ~Author Unknown
“When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.” ~Joyce Brothers
“What greater blessing to give thanks for at a family gathering than the family and the gathering.” ~Robert Brault
“Like branches on a tree, our lives may grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one.” ~Author Unknown
“Some family trees have beautiful leaves, and some have just a bunch of nuts. Remember, it is the nuts that make the tree worth shaking.” ~Author Unknown
“Trees without roots fall over.” ~Author Unknown
“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

And finally, I decorated a water bottle to match the frame and the box. I actually covered the white word strip with a bit of clear Contact paper to avoid potential smudges, but if you were going to throw a bunch of these into ice, I would fore-go the scallop edges and just make straight strips and laminate it all before gluing it to the bottles.

This was such a fun project. I hope it gives you some ideas for a family reunion or for any kind of party favors.

Supplies
Pattern Paper: Indigo Bleu by Pink Paislee (2-12×12 pages)
Cardstock: Bazzill, textured, teal (1-12×12 page)
Ribbon: 18″
Vinyl: Brown, white
Clear presentation cover (1-8.5×11 page)
Water bottle
Hershey’s Kisses