Boys Room - Wall of Trees

No I haven't fallen off the face of the planet....

Maybe I have.

I do feel like I have been orbiting a lot lately.

By that I mean circling around the same thing day after day.

That thing is the bedroom of my two youngest boys.

And I am quite proud of this next project.

I showed you this bedroom a few months ago.

I was determined to tackle this disaster.

And I did.

It stayed clean and organized for almost an hour.

But before long it was back to chaos.

So last week I decided to clean it again.

As I started cleaning I noticed the paint.

It was G.R.O.S.S.

Our home had been a rental before we moved in and the paint throughout the house

was in pretty bad shape. We've repainted all of the most visible parts of our home but

not the kids rooms yet.

I decided that this room really REALLY needed paint.

Right now.

So I went out to our garage.

And found this stuff.

It was 7:30 at night, I didn't want to go to the store to buy paint so I decided to mix my own.

I had a gallon of eggshell white paint

(that I bought for some reason, don't know why now.)

And I had a quart of brown and black.

I figured that if I mixed those together they would make a really nice grey color.

And they did.

I mixed about a 1/2 cup of the brown and the black paint into the white and it was perfect.

I began painting.

The gray was nice, but I wanted to have a little fun. So with a chalk line

I marked 10 inches down from the ceiling and I tapped it off.

The next morning I found some light blue paint in my garage.

And I found a test bottle of a darker navy blue.

So naturally I mixed those together (with a little black paint too)

and came up with this blue color, which I painted the top with.

Looking good but I wanted to have a little bit more fun so I decided to paint some trees on the wall.

And that's what this post is really about.

HOW TO PAINT TREES

For a kids room.

I got my inspiration from my good friend HERE.

And she ordered her trees off of an etsy shop found HERE.

So you don't have to paint them, you can buy something very similar to what I have painted.

But since this project was done on a whim, and I was $hort of fund$ I decided to paint them.

Once again I mixed paint colors till I had what I wanted.

This was just from left over wall paint.

You can use craft paint, but you will need to paint a sealer over it,

so I opted for wall paint.

Then I began painting.

Here's how.

If you have never tried something like this before, practice on some poster board first.

It's not hard but it does take some technique.

I used these two brushes for the whole thing.

Get two decent quality artist brushes.

A 1 inch brush and a 1/2 inch angled brush.

The angled brush was a lifesaver, be sure to have that.

1 - I printed out and hung an inspiration photo, so I would know what to aim for.
2 - I snapped some chalk lines on the wall so my trees would be somewhat straight.
3 - Then I painted in the thickness I wanted the tree trunks to be at the top of the wall.
I hope you can see all that in the first photo on the left. It's kinda small.

Then just start filling in.
Make a few sweeping lines for the bark and fill it in.
Then make sweeping lines on the other side. Fill it in.
Trees are naturally bumpy and uneven so that makes it easier.

Do this the whole way down and try to be random.
Make three or four lines, in one spot and two or one in another.
Switch sides often.
I used my chalk line as a general guide to keep me sort of straight, but I did want my tree bendy.
So I kind of swerved along the line a little bit.

Make some of the bark lines long and some short.

The picture above on the left has them all about the same width,

I changed that and made them longer and shorter.

Sometimes even paint a break in the middle of one.

After I painted the first two trees I decided to paint the trunks of the rest
and then paint the branches after, that is what I recommend doing.
It made it much easier to place them later.

General guidelines when painting trees.
Gradually paint the trunks larger as you go down.
I tended to do this naturally, without even thinking about it.
If you have a tendency to paint it smaller as you go you might want to start at the bottom and go up.

I didn't take any pictures while I was doing the branches or leaves,
by this time I was pretty immersed in what I was doing. Sorry. But they weren't very difficult.

Painting the branches.
The branches obviously start out thick and get thinner as they go.
If you have a bump or bend in the trunk that might be a perfect place for a branch.
When you paint branches shooting off of a main branch keep in mind that
the smaller branches can never be longer or thicker then the branch they are coming off of.
I stuck with smaller branches that were 2-3 feet long just to keep things simple and uncluttered.
I only did one branch longer then that and I'm pretty happy with it.
DO NOT GET SYMMETRICAL!
Nature is never symmetrical. Always alternate and try to keep things different.
Don't over do the leaves.
I know that in nature these trees would be covered with way more leaves the I painted on,
but I'm not as good of an artist as God is so I have to keep things more simple.

You might notice that I didn't do bark lines on the branches.
You can try it, but I didn't think it was worth the headache. They look great solid.

Last tip. Keep a wet rag handy incase you mess up. If you catch in soon enough you can just wipe it right off the wall.

Pay no attention to all of the junk in the corner of this photo.

Focus on the great trees.

I am not a tidy painter, and I always keep things real for you people.

Finished pics of the bedroom coming soon, as soon as I organize.

If you have any questions please comment or send me an email.

I love answering questions.

Thanks!