A mural can be a wonderful focal point for your baby's nursery. It can also make the baby's room look larger, which is great if the nursery is on the small side. What a special way to express yourself and make your little one's room just right.
1) Choose your artwork. You can use a favorite children's book, a print, or your own design. Choose something with definite outlines. Painting your mural will be easiest if the artwork has strong outlines and solid colors instead of shading.
2) Copy it in grayscale. You can copy or scan your artwork and print it onto a transparency.
3) Buy your paints. Match the main colors in your artwork with paint swatches at the paint or hardware store. Matte paint is more forgiving, but may be harder to clean. There are some new washable mattes that would be perfect for a child's room. For painting tiny details, you can use acrylics.
4) Paint the background. To give the background more texture, you can mix the paint with water and swirl, sponge or stipple it onto the nursery wall.
5) Use an overhead projector to project your image on the wall of the nursery. If your baby's room is small, you may have to split your artwork into several transparencies. For example, you may need four transparencies: one each for the upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right. Make sure you do not change the scale of your artwork on the computer before printing so your mural will be proportional. Keep your projector the same distance from the wall and line up the edges of the artwork with what you have already traced.
6) Trace your artwork on the nursery wall with a pencil. Don't draw too dark or your marks will be difficult to erase later.
7) Fill in with color. If you need to do some shading, start with the main color, then dry-brush lighter and darker versions of the color where needed. Remove a small amount of paint and add a small amount of black to get a darker color. For a lighter color, add your base paint to white a little at a time. For best results, don't go too far from the base color or there will be too much contrast. Depending on how detailed your artwork is, you may need to keep the projector on to show where the shading is. Don't worry if it doesn't look right at first. Just keep working and start over if you need to. Remember - it's just paint!
8) Outline with black if appropriate for the artwork you are using. Use a small brush and take your time!
9) Sign that baby! You've earned some credit.
10) Show off the nursery to family and friends.
© Hip and Little. Do not reproduce without permission.
