Easy Wall Murals

These are some wall murals that I have done in my children's rooms. A friend saw them and suggested that I start a business painting murals for people. However, I have a toddler at home and decided to start a creative business that I could do from home. Check out my website at http://www.kizmetkreations.com/.

I am willing to give away a trick to painting wall murals for those who want to try it at home. You can start off with your own drawing or a picture that you want to reproduce. (My kids chose Disney themes since we had seasonal passes the year we moved into our home).

Start by drawing a grid of horizontal and vertical lines, evenly spaced, on your original. The number of lines you use will depend on the amount of details in the picture. The more details the image has, the smaller the sections you want to divide the image into. Repeat the same number of sections, equal distance apart on the wall that you want the image reproduced on to. Then section by section, copy the picture from the original onto the wall with pencil. Take breaks often, and stand back to see where you need to make corrections.

When completely drawn, you are ready to paint. I used latex wall paint for the background since these were done in my children's rooms. Leave the area for the design white until ready to paint the design itself. I used acrylic paints for these projects, bought at a local craft store. I added planets at the top of the wall, (not shown), and glow in the dark constellations to the ceiling for extra effect.

Up, Up, and Away!

I did it! I managed to get motivated with my chalkboard project, and I managed to finish my dining room wall mural. The painted metal hot air balloons we bought in Annie's Attic in Mt. Dora, FL no longer are floating in space. They are in a blue sky soaring over a sunny meadow. The only problem is that my projects sort of take on a life of their own. This one decided it needs to grow some flowers and be the view from a European garden. I now must continue painting to add the flowers. I have also gone to Home Depot once more and bought some wooden lattice work. I have sanded it and plan on using some cherry stain on it and sealer, then placing it against my dining room wall and covering it with fake vines to add to the garden vista. There is a JoAnn's Fabrics near me that is moving and is having blow out sales to get rid of their inventory, so hopefully I can get some vines cheap. The picture above is the current stage of the project. To check out more walls murals in my home and additional artwork check out http://www.kizmetkreations.com/artgallery1.html

Magic Walls!

It's funny how life works. As I mentioned earlier this summer, I have a list of half finished or unstarted projects that I was planning to work on this summer since my kids were home and I would have more time due to not being a class mom, chauffeur, etc. Well, I didn't get that much done because my kids were home.

This project actually happened by mistake. I went to home depot one day to get plastic cement for a rocket my son was making for cub scouts. It turns out that the glues are on the paint aisle. While locating the glue, I eyed the glow in the dark paint I needed to finish the constellations in my son's room. I then spyed the item that inspired this project: chalk board paint.

This was the simplest project I have done in a while. We are trying to make part of the garage into a play area to occupy my youngest while I am working out there. We have been trying to cover the walls gradually with tapestries and shelving because they are full of holes and old wiring. I started painting this chalkboard on the lower half of a wall so my kids could reach it. The directions said to use a roller, which probably would have been faster, but I used a brush. Two coats and it looks great. Of course, I got a little out of hand and started painting sections of other walls with the excuse that I could write work ideas or notes to myself. Then I painted the inside of two kitchen cabinets for family members to write messages for each other. The paint dried fast so I was able to apply two coats within a few hours. It was just like using regular paint.

The simplicity of this project inspired me further last weekend. I ended up painting the constellations on my son's ceiling with the glow in the dark paint. I also temporarily finished the mural in my dining room. Look for more on this in my next post.

Creating a Play Space in the Garage

Last month I started writing about my half started projects that I planned to complete this summer. Well, I am off to a slow start as I have been spending a lot of time organizing cubscout activities and dying clothes.

However, I did manage to get half way through my garage floor project. I drew a map of my neighborhood and measured my son's hotwheels cars so I could make the map to scale. My son helped me tape off the roads, and then we spray painted meadow green paint over the area. My garage ended up having a green dust all over it from the paint that I ended up cleaning up for days afterward. It got all over everything. Spray paint was definitely not the way to go.

The second problem was when we pulled up the tape. We had used blue painter's tape, but it still ripped up the gray paint from the floor underneath. Thankfully I had leftover gray paint and was able to touch it up.

The next thing I need to do is paint some houses and the yellow lines on the road before putting a sealant over the design. The problem is finding the time to do this without having my one year old play around in the paint.

Faux Pas Corrected

Here is the corrected ladies' top that was featured in Jamaican Tie-Dye Gone Awry.

After the fiasco trying the traditional Jamaican tie-dye, my husband and I had to come up with a new idea. We were stuck with a bunch of children's sets, men's tanks, and men's shirts that were not fit to be displayed on our web site. We realized that however hideous the clothing had become, we were lucky that at least the colors were fairly light. We ended up re-designing these shirts as if they were blanks. The result was that areas that would normally have been white in a finished design had a pale tan hue. We were able to save the projects with a little extra time and creativity. The main lesson here is that no matter how much you screw up a project, there is always some way to fix it. The results may not be what you expected, but sometimes they can come out even better.

-Donna

Jamaican Tie-dye Gone Awry

I was telling someone a few weeks ago about my tie-dye business. I don't remember who it was, but it had to be a parent of a young child, because they said to me, "Oh, I saw that segment on Sesame Street. It looked like fun." Now, having a one year old, I knew exactly what they were talking about. I have seen this segment several times myself.

For those of you who do not have young children or watch Sesame Street for fun yourselves, let me fill you in. Grover has just returned from Jamaica where he was given a one of a kind tie-dye t-shirt. The scene then flashes to a video clip where a man demonstrates the traditional Jamaican tie-dye technique. He wraps a shirt around a bottle and secures it with rubberbands and then dunks it in a pot of dye which he has heated over a fire. The shirt is then removed, the rubberbands taken off, and the shirt re-wrapped and dyed again in a second color. This process is done a few more times using various colors. The shirt looks very brown at the end of the process. After it is washed some of the dye fades and the shirt has become various earth tones.

Well, I am always trying new techniques so I figured I would test this out. My husband and I wrapped some shirts around some bottles we had, (recycling at its best), and tried this technique. I was skeptical, but after the wash I realized the results were worse than I expected! The clothing looks like the rags we use to absorb excess dye! Needless to say, the results were not up to our standards, and you will not be seeing these pieces on our site. However, I am posting one here for everyone to have a good laugh.

Supplies For My Car Road Project

I stopped at Home Depot this morning and inquired about what paint to use for my garage floor neighborhood project. The salesperson suggested some indoor/outdoor spray paint and recommended that I use painter's tape to mark the areas I want to paint. Since I already painted the floor gray, I figured this would be the street, and I would paint the residential areas over the gray. I chose meadow green to spray for the "yards" and found a beige color to paint "houses". After that, I think the spray paint won't work for the details so I will have to break out my acrylics and a small paint brush. Hopefully nobody will walk on it until I put some kind of protective coating over it. I want to get started right away, but need to clean my garage again. We recently moved the baby into a toddler bed, and her crib is right where I need to paint. I'm contemplating a garage sale, if I can get over the heat.