Hand-Painted Wall Decals

When deciding what I wanted to do with Alexandria's room before she was born, I knew I wanted to keep the blue wall color that I loved, but wanted to add some sort of 'girly' touch to the walls.  After picking out the perfect bedding, I kept trying to figure out a way to incorporate the bird/tree print onto the walls.  I actually bought curtains to match the set so that I could frame the print part of them in the corner and hang them on the walls; still a good idea that I have yet to do to date!

At some point, I noticed that the print on the comforter was a perfect size to add some detail to the walls.  If only I could figure out how to easily re-create the print!  So many people have asked me how in the world I did this, so I figured it was a good craft to post about while stuck at the house in the snow for what feels like the 20th time this year.  Here's a picture of a bit of the stenciling and the comforter on the back of the crib that I used as the template.

Things you'll need: - Image of whatever you'd like to re-create at the size you would like to re-create it at.  I was lucky and the comforter's print was the exact size I wanted to use.
 - Clear plastic roll or anything that's large enough and transparent to trace your image onto (I found the roll of clear thicker plastic at ACMoore, but I can't remember the exact brand.)
 - Piece of poster board (get two in case you make a mistake!)
 - Exacto blade
 - Permanent marker
 - Pencil
 - Tape - I used painter's tape just to make sure it would come off easy
 - Paint in all of the colors you'd like to use - I bought sample sizes at the paint store to use and they were more than enough paint for what I was doing and I got the benefit of being able to pick from tons of colors to match the original print's colors.
 - A few paint brushes - I got a few from a craft store that were a bit better quality than the Crayola kids paint brushes I had around the house!  No need to spend a ton of money though.

The first thing I did was lay out the comforter (or whatever image you've chosen) onto a table and placed the plastic sheet over the image.  I used a permanent marker to trace the pattern onto the plastic sheet from the comforter.  After I was done, I cut out the image pieces so that it created a stencil I could trace onto something else.  If your image is easier to trace onto poster board, then you may be able to skip these steps and just trace directly from the image to the poster board.  After making a plastic paper stencil, I traced that onto the poster board so I had a more sturdy stencil to trace onto the walls.  Again, I cut out the images (see below) so that I could use it as my stencil.

*Note: You need to make sure that you pay attention to where you need to leave pieces of the stencil in so that they connect the patterns.  If you cut out too much, then certain parts of the pattern will fall through and you'll lose site of them.

As you can see in the picture, the next step was to position the poster board on the wall where you would like to trace the image and secure it with the painters tape.  My stencil had a lot of things going in and out, so you'll see I have tiny pieces of painters tape throughout the branches to keep them from flopping away from the wall.  At this point, I simply traced the stencil onto the wall with pencil (easy for fixing mistakes).

The next step was to start painting the base colors (if your image has multiple colors like mine).  I thought it would be easier to paint the entire flower one color and simply go back after it dried to paint the middle circle and to place the dots on the image.  You can do this however you think it's easiest.  I did 2-3 coats of each color depending on how well it was covering.  I had 4 sets of the stencils on the walls, so I rotated around the room while everything dried.

In the above picture, you can see that I've finished the base color of most of the images, left the branches and leaves for last since they're the darkest color, and started adding pencil traces of small stencils I made for the bird's wing and the flower centers.  I made those cut outs using the cello to poster board tracing technique used for the full stencil.  Next up, I filled in the flower centers and bird's wing that I had just traced on.  Again, 2-3 coats were needed to get good coverage.  Then I painted in the branches and leaves while adding in some dots to some of the flowers.

The original image had a lot more 'activity' going on with the dots and colors.  As I was progressing, I made some executive decisions about changing some colors or not adding in everything.  This is of course something that everyone will have to decide based on their own image and personal preference.  Below is a picture of the final corner with two stencils.  There's another one on each of those walls, one in the opposing corner that you could see in the first picture in the post and another coming off of the trim around her door.

It adds a really neat personal touch to the room and really incorporated some 'girly' stuff onto the blue walls that I loved.  I'm going to be very sad to leave these behind when we eventually move, but Emma has already requested an image of a beagle in her room, so I'll be using this technique again soon!