Tav Does Art at Home: The Nursery
Created | Updated Nov 23, 2014
Tav shows her artistic skills in the Nursery
As some of you know I got a baby this summer. My little boy is now almost 3 months old and doing very well.
Among other things, getting a baby meant tidying up our spare room and turning it into a nursery. We didn't know if I was expecting a boy or a girl, and we don't like all this blue/pink stuff anyhow, so we decided to keep the colours neutral. We painted the walls in shades of green and yellow. I wanted to give the room as a kind of decoration topic and decided to make it a 'forest' (more or less).
Over the place where the bed was supposed to stand I wanted to have a tree branch. Something to look at when waking up or falling asleep. At first I thought of just buying one of these wall stickers, but after not finding anything I liked for an appropriate price, I just did it myself. As you may know, I do like painting anyway.
It all started with a tiny sketch of about the size of a postcard. I transferred the shape of the branch on the wall with pencil. When I was happy with that I took a piece of cardboard and cut out a few leave shapes of different sizes. I used them to draw the leaves on the wall by drawing around them.
Once the preparatory drawing was done I could start painting. For this I had bought a few small bottles of wall paint in two shades of brown and white. Additionally there was some leftover green paint. I used a small paintbrush with stiff hair. First I painted the brown branches with a mixture of the brown paints and white. I left out the parts where the leaves would be.
After the brown paint was dry I could start painting the leaves. For this I mixed the green paint with some white and also a bit of brown to make the colour look more natural. I also used a different shade for each leave so they would not meld into each other. I also gave them some more texture by not mixing the colours completely, which resulted in the brush strokes being visible.
Once the whole branch was painted I decided that something was still missing. I bought some lovely butterfly wall stickers at IKEA. (They only cost a few Euros and I didn't even use a third of the stickers which were in the package. I wonder what to do with them.)
Then we could move the furniture into the new room. Over the bed we hung a mosquito net which was decorated with some green cloth and artificial birds. Next to it hang two large green paper balls which for me symbolize tree tops – but that may be just my imagination. We also found a forest carpet at IKEA, which we put on the wooden floor. It shows a little river, tree stumps and various animal footprints.
I am very happy with the result of my little painting exercise and will probably try to expand on the forest topic soon. As I am at home now with the baby I can do a bit more arts and crafts stuff than before? I intend to use this time and already have a few new projects in my mind. I just have to get myself to start doing them...
