My Nursery Mural

I've decided I need to give this another try.  I wrote a few posts in the beginning, then life got in the way.  I never stop working on some kind of art or project, but I have not been good about taking pictures or posting about them.  I'm going to try and do better.  I am going to try and post at least once a week, both on current and past projects.

This past week was Thanksgiving.  I really enjoyed the family time, and the turkey, but I spent most of my time painting a mural in my niece's room.  I realized that I had never shown off any of my work on here.  So I thought I would start by showing you some of my early work, in particular, my daughter's nursery.

I have painted a few murals before this, but I don't have many pictures.  My first mural was based on Fantasia, and was painted in my dorm hallway.   Several of the people living on my floor submitted mural designs.  We spent an entire semester painting.  We had Fantasia, Simpsons, Toy Story, and Gummy Bears.  We were all very proud of ourselves.  Two years later, we moved out of the dorm.  When we came back for a visit, we found out the university had painted over all of them.  Suddenly they were worried about copyright infringement.

My second mural wasn't much, and hardly anyone saw it.  I was working at Walmart and they wanted me to paint a scroll with our pledge on it.  It took me a few days, and it stayed there until the building was torn down about 4 years later.  I was quickly learning that my works don't seem to last long.

Next was my daughter's nursery.  I made a cross stitch blanket that had a teddy bear laying on the moon.  This became my inspiration.  I found a bedding set that had a similar design, then painted the nursery to match.  My husband helped paint the other walls, the border trim, and helped with the sky.

I started with a mural on the main wall. We then added a border along the other walls.  I painted the characters of the mural into the border of the longest wall and stars on the shorter walls.  The room took a couple of weeks to finish.  Both kids have really loved it though.  When they were babies, they would talk to the characters right above the changing table.

We got a valance in our bedding set, and I made a set of curtains from blackout fabric.  We also hung up a net for stuffed animals.

We painted two constellations in the sky, Gemini and Canus Major, to include our dogs Gemini and Sirius. 

The bunnies and the sheep came from our bedding set.  They rounded out the picture perfectly and added some character.

  This room will always be a turning point for me, and I have always been proud of it.  This was a large project that I was able to complete and that made me feel like I might actually be a bit of an artist.  The colors were perfect for a nursery, and both of my kids have loved the animals around the room.  We taught them about the constellations and why they were important to us.  I hope the next person who lives in this house loves it as much as we do.