How to Paint a Mural for a Nursery

Murals are a beautiful, eye-catching way to personalize your baby's nursery. It can be expensive and time consuming to have a professional artist do it for you, but even if you're not an artist yourself, you can do it with a simple design and an overhead projector. Here's how to paint a mural that will brighten up your baby's room for years to come.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Acrylic paint
• Plastic containers
• Assorted paintbrushes

Prepare the Wall

1. Consider whether the room will be used as a nursery for subsequent babies, or the baby will stay in the room through childhood. This can help you choose a theme that will grow with the child, if necessary.

2. Choose a design made up of simple geometric shapes in solid colors. Photographs and highly detailed designs with a lot of shading are best left to the pros. You can get ideas from greeting cards, children's books, art prints, or anything that catches your eye.

3. Make a color copy of the image to use as a reference while painting.

4. Make a black-and-white transparency of the image. You can do this at home, or go to a copy shop and have a clerk help you.

5. Place the overhead projector in front of the wall you want to paint. Make sure it's aligned straight with the wall to ensure you don't end up with a distorted image.

6. Project the image onto the wall and move the projector backward or forward to change the size of the image until it looks the way you want it to.

7. Trace the outlines of the design on the wall with a pencil. Use light pressure, to ensure you won't be able to see the pencil lines through the paint later.

Paint the Design

8. Pour acrylic paints into paper cups or lidded plastic containers.

9. Start painting according to the method that feels most comfortable to you. If you want to concentrate on one area at a time, you can start at the top left corner of the design (this will keep you from smearing your work as you go). You could also paint the largest areas first, or paint one color at a time.

10. Back up from the wall to check your progress against the color copy every now and then. Make sure you haven't accidentally painted over any details or colored anything incorrectly.

11. Clean your brushes in between colors by dipping them into the cup of water and wiping them on the rag. Make sure the brush isn't too wet when you reuse it, or you'll end up with paint drips.

Tips & Warnings

• You can find acrylic paints at craft and hobby stores. Bring your color copy to select colors. The colors don't have to be exact and you can be as creative as you want to be.
• Choose quality craft paint brushes to prevent loose bristles from sticking to your design. You don't have to buy the ultra-expensive professional brushes, but stay away from the bargain basement sets. Get flat (square) tipped brushes in a variety of sizes, and a few round brushes for details. Check the label to ensure they're made for use with acrylics.