The Mystery Mural Reveal

Remember the mural I told you I was doing in the boys' new playroom?  Well it's finally finished.  After lots of debating with my real artist friend, she convinced me to try it myself.  I didn't know if I had the time, patience, or ability to do something so permanent - I mean it's going on the stinkin' WALL for cryin' out loud!!!  But after wasting a LOT of time, I ultimately decided to give it the ol' college try.

I found this canvas on the internet a while back, and thought hmmm- that would be cute in a playroom.  Our new playroom is a big room.  So big in fact, that a small canvas wouldn't look right on such a big wall.  I decided that instead of paying close to $200 for a small canvas, I would just pay my friend Kimmie to paint it as a mural.  And, well, you know the rest of the story.  So let's take a look at my progress :)

This is what I wanted to the finished product to look like.

Artist Kimmie told me that because the wall or, "canvas" if you will, was so dark I would need to paint everything white first.  Otherwise, my color wouldn't show up over that dark wall.  I'm soooo glad she shared that little pointer with me, because I would NOT have thought of that myself.  Whew!  Crisis #1 averted...

(No - we have no ceiling or carpet yet - coming soon!)

I'll be honest and tell you that the wall stayed like that for a few days.  I had to work up my nerve to add color.  Once I finally decided that I was brave enough to add color, I picked Saturn to start with first. 

I figured out really quickly that once I picked a color to start with, I needed to stay with that color for a while.  So I just continued on with the "warm" planets...

This is how the mural looked at the end of my first night....

On the second night, I started with the sun...

After the sun, I went on to Jupiter, since it still had yellow and orange in it...

Next I added the asteroid belt, the stars, a rocket and comets...

I realize I'm no artist.  My artist friend is probably cringing right now.  I am really happy with it though.  Not because I think it's perfect, but because I think it's just what I wanted in the playroom - colorful, happy, child-like and educational (poor ol' Pluto didn't make the cut).  And I'm pretty proud that I took the chance on doing it myself.  I will always have a new appreciation for artists, and for people that have that crazy God-given talent for things like this.  I wish I had several hundred ounces more of that kind of talent.

So here is the finished product - two weeks, several hours and about $30 later - 

Feel free to give me your honest opinions!  And no, all of the walls in the playroom are not this dark:)  I will do a final playroom reveal in (hopefully) just a few more weeks when the ceiling and carpet are installed. We're waiting on three more rooms to be painted.