Muralification

 

Okay, the little ‘hint’ I gave you at the end of my Christmas on New Year's post…  

You could pretty much tell it was a wall mural.  I have been working on it a little bit every time I go to Mom’s.  Allowing the paint to dry between the first trunk coat, the highlighting, the shading, and three separate colors of leaves, and sometimes not working on it at all when I visited - sorry Mom - it took forever! 

Well,  here’s the finished product…

I was very scared after I told mom about the idea and then she said yes.  If you have ever free-hand painted on a wall, it makes this little bulge at the edge of the shape as you paint, and I was worried the whole wall would be full of bulges outlining every tree branch and leaf and she would hate the tree and we would try to paint over it but all the bulging edge bumps would still show and it would be a disaster. 

I tried to get my mom’s artsy friend Sue to paint it, but she assured me I could do it.  Thanks a lot Sue ; ).  So, I decided to not worry about clean edges and just let it be a little transparent and whimsy like one I had seen at a bakery in town.  See how the leaves above are a little see-through and don’t have a perfect edge?  That was my safety, keeping everything flat and thin,  so it could be painted over without a trace if she hated it!  So Sue peer pressured me and I got the trunk done. I just now tackled the leaves over Christmas (actually the weekend after).  Since my brother was there who used to be quite artsy himself, I tried to get him to take on the leaves, but he said he wouldn’t be able to decide where to put them all.  I finally carved my potato and started stamping and let him do some touchups behind me.

What?  Don’t you carve potatoes and paint with them?  Haha, I know crazy, right?  It is this weird idea I clipped from a magazine years ago, and finally got to use it.  They took a (in their case, long) potato, cut it in half lengthwise, then carved the long,  flat side to be in the shape of a bird, and stamped it around the edge of a wooden tray, using paint. 

Mine was a leaf…

See how I chopped it in half then trimmed that edge to make the flat part leaf-shaped?

The reason I liked the potato idea is because I didn’t want to hand paint each leaf.  I had thought about cutting out sponges to make a leaf ‘stamp’, but didn’t want the cheesy sponge-painted look.  I liked the fact that the potato would make a clean impression, with no spongey holes.  We had to touch them up a bit because of the texture on the wall, but it worked pretty well, and I would recommend trying it out if you have a project to use it on!  It would be fun for kids- they could mark their desired shape on the flat edge and let the adults do the carving.  I have also seen apples cut in half and stamped on tote bags and things like that.  That is stashed in my idea book as well – if only there were more time in a day!

We’re slowly finishing up decorating this craft room.  You can see the first phase of the decorating in this post.  We hope to make an Ikea run next week and then when I go to Mom’s again to build and install, I’ll bring you the update!