Painting a wall mural

Hi!

So seen as i haven't shared this pregnancy on FB yet (probably should do that but eh..) I need somewhere to share my master plan and get ideas and experiences to bump off people. Cause this is a big project, once again something I have never done before, but I have big plans =)

So in our nursery, I am just going to paint one wall - a feature wall if you will (depsite my bagging them out so bad when i was growing up cause mum and dad thought they were awesome and put one in every room....:rolleyes:) But instead of one solid colour, I am going to pain a mural =)

Its going to be a space theme, like a galaxy type thing, a big nebula with lots of star dust etc.. and going to be mainly in blues and purples with a little green/yellow, maybe a planet? maybe from the view of standing on a planet, so might be some foreground - but I will do that in a style I use to paint all the time where the foreground, so the trees etc are black - like a silhouette and having the background - the galaxy etc.. being the main focus.

I have only painted a wall once before, and that was a friends in a solid colour that just involved me rolling up and down for hours... I do paint with acrylic and canvas and the lady at the paint shop said it shouldn't be much different than that cause the paint is waterbased aswell.

I chose a space theme.. not only cause i love space, but I want my child to know that the sky isn't the limit, that they can do whatever they want, they can achieve anything they put their mind to and the possibilities are endless, just like space, and what we see of it is like 1 tiny little grain of sand of what is out there, the beauty and the possibilities.

Nursery n Bubs (hope this link is allowed) but its to my pinterest album which has a couple (at the moment) of pictures of what I'm thinking.

any tips, advice, realistic bring me back down to earth ideas would be much apprieated!!

has anyone else done a mural for their childs room?

Not done one myself - but have seen your ideas on pinterest and think they are great. My dad did Miffy on one wall of my room when I was a kid and birds (life like rather than cute) on another wall and I loved them. I know he had the pictures and then drew a grid over them and then drew a grid on the wall to scale them up - but you are very artistic looking at your sketches so you may be able to do it all free hand. Personally I don't know whether it is hard to do stuff on a large scale or not. I have also heard of people using projectors to project onto a wall and then use that to help scaling up a design.

Whatever go for it, am sure the hardest bit is just starting it, and I find when creating often mistakes lead to great new ideas/inventions

Thanks! I was going to do free hand but the size is intimidating me to make sure its not lop sided esp. If i do do a planet. when i was measuring the wall i was thinking the grid method would prob be the best way.

sent via my vortex manipulator

Sounds like a beautiful wall


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk so sorry if I'm confusing you ;)

I was thinking of doing one, but decided to do several canvases instead, so that we can chop and change as they get older, and if we buy another house, they can come with us :)

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I was thinking of doing one, but decided to do several canvases instead, so that we can chop and change as they get older, and if we buy another house, they can come with us :)

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I did think that, that a wall is a bit more 'locked in', and what if Spock hates it.. but eh, it will be a fun project anyway that is different and a challenge for me. and if it does't work out i can always just paint over it =P

completely true!!

I love the idea!

We did a mural in DDs cubby house - one wall has a little girl sitting on the grass next to a gum tree - there some animals (gallah, kookaburra, koala and possum) around the place.

She loves it!

We (my mum and I) just did it free hand - we used acrylic.

Hope it turns out awesome!!!


**Sent from my phone using Tapatalk.

ok..progress, I thought about just doing it free hand, but thought cause of the size I might be better off starting with a proper design. So I have a picture, and I've gridded it. But now I'm thinking how to grid the wall, could just pencil a grid on, but will be a PITA if i have to erase the lines, or will the paint diffidently cover it? My other option is to bluetac string, which might take some more time, but might actually be easier than drawing straight lines on a wall.

any ideas? Thanks everyone!

Hire a projector & project the design on the wall?


Sent from my iPhone, more than likely while I should be doing something else!

Chalk line it, baby. Pro-tip from my years in theatre. I think you can get chalk string from hardware stores. All you need to do is unravel the string, line it up where you want it (either pin it in place or have someone hold the other end, and flick it, and it will leave a chalk line. Water soluble, can paint over it etc. You should be able to grid your wall very easily with it.

Thanks for the tips!
Im not sure where I can get a projector from, but I did think of that.

Wow PZ, I didn't even know that sort of thing exists, where can you get that from?

Hm I'd say your best bet would be a hardware store, maybe bunnings? We used to use it for painting sets and stuff.

Teirae, your wall sounds beautiful!! I so wanna pinch the idea lol. Saw your Pinterest wall and LOVE the northern lights one - that's one that you can really just smudge along as you go, it'd be harder to make mistakes with it because it's not so definite. But yeah, not so space-y.

You can definitely get chalk-line from hardware stores, we've used it plenty of times for fencing and bordering our yard and stuff. If you use pencil to draw your lines on the wall, it depends on your paint and the colour as to how it'll be covered, and when you erase it, it can take the paint with it (learnt that the hard way!).

The house we moved into already had a nursery painted, the whole room is green with a jungle theme, one wall has an elephant, lion, giraffe, snake and butterfly painted on it. Beautiful :) It looks as though the paint used was just water colour, and it was hand painted. When you're up close you can pick out little mistakes if you try - like the elephant's trunk colour goes outside the line etc. But from the door, or if you're just generally looking, you don't notice anything except how cool it looks :) I reckon people (and Spock especially) will adore whatever you do.

Good luck!

It sounds beautiful! I painted an underwater mural for my twins' room, you can see photos http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._6502910_n.jpg http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._2460672_n.jpg http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._3553894_n.jpg http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._5957544_n.jpg http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._3301912_n.jpg Some of it was freehand but I am not a great artist so I went with stencils for the fish, mermaids and shells, using a blunt ended brush to dab the paint on. Since those photos were taken there are clouds and birds in the sky (white paint applied with a sponge for clouds). Bunnings have a great range of paints and brushes.

I have also done a mural for DS1's room, which is a midnight blue with back motocross stickers (it looks like they are all jumping their bikes) and silver stars in the sky. Again I used stencils for the stars but I spray painted them on which looks awesome. For the details I found less is more, so there is a lot of space on the wall that is not covered with stars. Stickers can be a great addition to a mural, combined with paint, and there are lots of companies that sell vinyl stickers at a great price. Ebay is a great place to look for them, even just for ideas.

Thanks everyone!
Trav ~ Your room is pretty cool, it is amazing how something so simple can add so much to the room!
Yea, I plan to stick some glow in the dark stars on after I finish aswell to add more depth to it.

I've thought about doing wall murals for the kid's rooms as well (just have to wait to find out if the new bundle is pink or blue to work out which rooms will eventually be the girl/boy room). Like someone else mentioned, I was thinking about the projector idea. I was planning on getting the picture printed onto projector paper and hiring a projector (lke the type in schools and unis), then I slapped myself on the head because I remembered that we actually have a projector (the home theater type) that is just in the garage because we don't have a theatre room in this house but we did in the old house, lol. I figure I could probably hook that up and have it just display the picture and hopefully I could do it that way...

I painted a tree on my DS2's bedroom wall (it's now DD's room)

I was looking through a baby magazine and saw the tree in a tiny little pic and loved it. Found the website were you could buy the wall sticker for it which was over $100, couldn't justify paying that so i decided to paint it myself. I printed out the tree as big as i possibly could, A4 or A3 i can't remember and from there i drew a stensil of it myself.

I did this by sticking A4 pieces of paper to the wall and also together as i made my way up drawing the trunk and the branches and the leaves. It's pretty much the height of the wall. Once i had completed the stensil of the tree i cut it out and stuck it to the wall where i then traced around it with pencil. Once i had the tree drawn on the wall i then began to paint it.

The bedroom has 3 blue walls and 1 white which the tree is painted on.

I got so much satifaction out of painting the tree it was a huge accomplishment. So if you can figure out how to do it go for it, i'm sure your little one will love it.

The tree itself was very simple, i only needed two colours of paint.

Good luck :) If i get a moment (probably after kids are in bed tonight) i could try and figure out how to do link :)

ok!
I think I can say I'm finished! Well... I have to say I'm done otherwise Im just going to keep adding to it and it will never be done. but I think it will do. All I have to do now is wait for my glow in the dark stars to come in the mail and i can stick them on. Its not perfect, not as good as I pictured..but I'm happy with it.

Besides, I want to get to arranging furniture and sorting clothes etc, and this wall has stopped me doing that cause it had to be finished first!

Just letting people know there are pictures of it up on my blog. (link in my sig).

=)

Teirae, wow! That's fantastic, Spock is one lucky little bubby :)

Yes! I just finished a sky theme mural a few days ago. I realise it took a while lol since DS is 10 months, but we moved house recently. Anyhoo, i did mine on cardboard, then stuck the pieces on like a jigsaw. You might like to make some 3D elements. Adding shaving cream to paint makes for fluffy fun! I made clouds with the cream, but you could really do anything. :)

Looks good :) Well done.