Their parent’s thought: wouldn’t it be nice to bring the kid’s favorite place into their playroom?

We all got together to take a look at the room and talk about their ideas for a forest mural.

They envisioned the three children playing in the forest. Ben loves to go fishing so the mural will need to have a pond to fish in!

Mia and Olivia will be playing together as fairies.

Sample board created for the "Fairies in the Forest" mural.

Mia as a fairy playing in the forest.

Black and white sketch for Fairies in the Forest Mural on a 20 foot wall.

We have drawn a layout of the entire mural, to scale, in black and white. The mural wall is 20 feet wide and will be painted to create an overall feeling of being in the depths of the forest. The fairies will be playing in the foreground under the trees. The tree on the right will be painted right over the door to a crawl space that is the children’s playhouse

The Fairies in the Forest Mural, complete

Finished portrait of Ben, fishing in the coy pond.

Finished portrait of Mia and Olivia as fairies.

Close up shots of finished mural, featuring portraits of Ben, Mia and Olivia playing around the coy pond. To see the mural painted in day to day progress and the photos we took of the children for their mural portraits, read on!

Painting in the background trees.

Laying in the background on the first day of painting.

On the first day, we laid in the background texture using a watery mix of green and yellow paint. We applied it with a large chip brush, then blended it out with a large sponge. Next, we painted in the background trees with a thin mix of grey paint and little green leaves were painted throughout.

A pond surrounded by a variety of rocks.

The morning of the second day.

Fleshing in the boy's figure.

The figures of the girls are roughed in.

Ben posing with "fishing pole."

Mia posing as a fairy.

Olivia posing as a fairy.

The sample board we painted for a Magical Forest Mural

A little girl named Alexandra will have her room transformed into a Magical Forest on Thursday! The room is now painted a nice, neutral Benjamin Moore# 964. When Alexandra wakes up Friday morning she will see fanciful trees dripping with sugarplums, curly-cue wild flowers tickling up the wall and fairies hovering all about. We’ll share the completed room with you next weekend. Can’t wait!

It is always helpful to “plant the trees” and create a sketch to the scale of the room, as pictured below.

First we layout the trees in the room. With a piece of chalk and a rag handy to wipe off any errors, we draw the trees with our scale layout to guide us.

By lunch time, we have all of our bare trees and wildflowers painted in Bavarian Cream Benjamin Moore flat paint.

Next, we paint in all the leaves and sugarplums. Because we’ve mixed and labeled all of our paints in the studio we can really fly!

All the bare trees and foliage are painted in first.

Leaves and sugarplums have sprouted on our trees!

A chevron wall pattern painted in a day.

There’s nothing like being prepared.

We painted the chevron pattern on this wall in one day.

It looks simple but it can be a disaster if you don’t think it through.

it’s worth the time to first do a layout on paper to the scale of your wall.

sketch of wall drawn to scale

When you’re ready to layout your chevron pattern on the wall, you’ll need:

• an aluminum framing square
• water soluble pencils close to the same color as the chevron. You might want to use a couple of different shades of pencils to mark it our with, because it can get confusing.
• a 4foot level
• lots of blue tape.
  

  Use an aluminum framing square to layout 45 degree angles on wall.

After you have your chevron pattern marked out with water soluble pencils, tape it all out, making sure that you keep the tape on the outer edge of the pencil mark. That way, when you paint in the chevron, the marking line will disappear into the paint. Don’t forget to tape out the entire perimeter, as well.

The entire wall must be carefully taped out before painting.

The tape is sealed with clear glaze to prevent bleeding.

Next, we always take the time to seal the blue tape to the wall with clear glaze and a medium sized art brush. This extra step prevents “bleed”, insuring a clean line and saves a great deal of tedious touch up work at the end.

Cut in the edges before you roll out the larger areas.

Now it’s time to paint the chevron design. Our wall is base painted with Benjamin Moore 2141-50 matte finish, mixed at 50%, so that it is much paler and bluer than the swatch. For the chevron stripe we chose Benjamin Moore 1604 in semi-gloss. When you paint it on the wall, it hardly shows up but dries to just the right amount of contrast.

Note that we cut in at the adjacent edges, and also where the pattern is too tight for the roller to cover.

We used a 4” short nap roller, used for decorative finishes. We allowed the paint to dry for a couple of hours before applying the second coat.

Finally, we carefully remove all the blue tape, holding it at a 90 degree angle to the wall. Have the chevron paint and the wall paint ready for touch ups with a small flat art brush. No matter how careful you are, there will inevitably be areas of bleed and spots of paint.

Our chevron wall was accomplished in one day, with proper planning and the right tools.

The paint is applied with a 4 inch short nap roller.

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