Are you ready for the most adorable thing ever? Are you really ready? OK, here goes. LOOKATTHEADORABLEFAMILYTREEIDESIGNEDFORMEANDHUBS!!!!! *breath*
I am so very pleased with how this project turned out. In fact, it might be my favorite thing that I’ve ever designed. EVER. (EVAAAAAARRRRRR, right sisters?)
*drumrollllllllllll*
Welcome to our “family tree!” It’s not a real family tree because those follow some sort of genealogy structure, but I love it just the same.
I designed this print in InDesign using five different fonts (the hearts are a font!) and three different colors (brown, green and pink in different transparencies). InDesign has this great feature where you can draw a line and then make your text curve to the line, so I used that to get some of the names in our tree to curve like tree branches.
The Fonts:
I only did our immediate families because once you get past that we get wayyyyyyy to crazy. Already we have three sets of parents! I had to contain our crazy somehow 🙂 Our parents are in brown and paired with one another and a small pink heart. The dark green names are those of my siblings. The hubby has none, so they are all mine *evil laugh.* Then the lighter green font are the various last names of our family. I am a Bauer turned Smith. My older sister is a Rivera. My dad is a Bauer and my mom a Rowicki-turned-Brown. Tierney is my mother-in-law’s maiden (and now middle) name, and Shaffer is my step mom’s maiden (now middle) name. The date is our wedding date, when our families became one big happy family (our one-year anniversary is coming up so soon! Holy cow.).
I absolutely love how well this print turned out. This might be the first of my designs I have professionally printed for us. It is just perfect.
Do you have a family tree in your home?
A Smith of All Trades 
Sweet family tree! With such a cute font, it could even be adapted as a decoration for a nursery or playroom with things like the child’s birth date,weight, siblings names, etc. Btw, I’m with you on enjoying things like laser levels (I use one a lot!), but I love the sound of cicadas on a summer morning. 🙂
Thanks, Ann! I like your suggestion, too! I’ll have to keep it in mind when the hubby and I have babies… I can only imagine how much fun I’ll have decorating a baby’s room!
Also, the sound of cicadas is just fine, but up close and personal they are WAY freaky. We found one on our desk the other night and I might have cried a little.
Your blog looks awesome! I’ll have to add it to my list of blogs to check each day 🙂
Thanks, I’ll be following along with your blog too. Haha, I agree… don’t think I’d welcome a cicada inside… I just like to hear them, not see ’em!
I was wondering how you made your downloaded fonts available on the program. I’ve tried numerous times and can’t seem to get it right. The font website offers little information and I figured since you have obviously done (and very beautifully by the way) you’d be a good person to ask.
I love this idea a lot. I’m trying to re-create something similar as a gift to a family member. Yours is stunning though!
Samantha, are you using a mac or a pc? On the mac there is an application called Font Book. Once you install the fonts in Font Book (you can drag them into the application once you unzip the files), they should be available in all of your programs. I haven’t had any problems with mine, but if they don’t appear right away maybe try restarting your computer and seeing if they’ll load. If you are using a PC… I am not sure. I have a PC at home, but I don’t do any design work on it, nor do I have design programs. Because of that, I do not download fonts and don’t know how to load them.
Does that help? What program are you using?
Thanks for stopping by! If you have any other questions while you are making yours, feel free to shoot me an email!! I’m happy to help.
I use a pc (unfortunately) and after some messing around in the folders I figured it out. For future reference though to anyone reading this, once you download the font you not only have to extract the file by right clicking on it but actually go into the folder itself and right click and install the .ttf file(s).
I don’t typically work with design programs but figured I’d give this one a shot since it seemed rather interesting, the InDesign CS6 that is. Which so far I’m loving. Thank you for responding though and again I LOVE this particular project you posted!.