After I did the lime green room for Princess number 1, I asked Princess number 2 what she wanted for her room. I was thinking she would do something similar to her sister but was a little unsure what to do when she told me she wanted a "Pooh" room to go along with her "collection" so having NEVER painted anything other than color on walls, I thought I would have to consult someone until I had the thought that it was just paint and if she didn't like it I could just paint over it. Once I got that thought in my head, I gave up the fear of painting on the wall. I am not sure why I had such a fear of messing it up or that it would matter if I did mess it up. I grabbed a tube or two of brown acrylic paint from the craft store that were about $1 each and just squirted some on a brush and went for it.
The upper wall had been sponged with different colors so I had to paint that with light blue to make it look like a sky. I had to paint the basic colors before I painted the tree so I went with blue for the upper wall and trying to save paint and time, I left the lower wall the egg shell color it had been and then put some texture of color on it. The room had a border on it which I will talk about Monday but I'll just let you know that when you do something like this, you need the base colors done and then you can do accents after.
So with that, I did the blue first and then started on the tree trunk. I found that with the lighter colors under the brown, I didn't have to do any shading other than thinning the paint to make the tree have a texture and a grain to it.
If you look at the tree from back a ways, you can see the grain more on the lower part where the light paint shows through but I thought it still looked like a tree so wasn't worried. I branched out at the base like a tree would but it is behind the bed so I didn't want to pull it out to take a picture. Now, she has a twin bed in there but at the time she had a bunk bed so there are pictures from both.
When I got to the top of the tree, I started "branching" out literally. I thought about painting little branches on the tree but thought that it would be too much work and would make it more defined which isn't really what I cared about. I thought about where to paint the tree in the room as well. If I did it on one wall, it is such a small room that I thought it would take up the attention on just one wall and not be very big. One wall has two closets, one has a window, one has a door and a weird angle and the other is in the narrow area where you go into the room so there really was only one option for me. That was to make the tree in the corner and have it branch out in both directions on both walls. So, I then had to decide how big to make it and thought I wanted it high enough to show over the bunk bed. So, I measured how tall the bunk was and went from there as to where to start branching out the branches. lol
At this point, I was getting a bit overwhelmed thinking that I had to paint all the leaves on and I like painting that look realistic so for me the thought of trying to paint on leaves was overwhelming. I said a little prayer and thought about what I could do to make the room cute and a bit easier for me and came up with some great ideas.
I went somewhere and to this moment I can't remember where I got the green leaves for the tree but someone was donating them for something I was doing for charity or something and they were new greens of plastic that looked like leaves. I am constantly amazed when I pray for guidance and Heavenly Father just has things show up that I NEVER would have thought of myself. The funny other thing is that this little frame/shelf with a circular hole was also donated and when I looked at her little collection of Pooh stuff she had Owl and I thought how cute it would be to make a "hole" in the tree and have it be Owls home. There in front of me was this donated ugly frame shelf. I painted the area behind the frame darker so it would look like a dark Owls home in a tree. I then painted the frame / shelf with the same color and hung it high on the tree not wanting someone to pull it down on them to get the stuffed animal.
Once I had the tree painted and the frame up, it was time for the leaves. I didn't want to glue them to the wall as that would ruin the wall if it was pulled off. So, I went and bought very short staple gun staples. I thought of tacking them up using tacks but worried they would constantly be falling and so I just started at the trunk and started stapling the leaves out toward the edges of the branches.
Finally, the tree looked like a tree. I didn't put so much green on that you couldn't see the branches under the green but just enough that when I stood back, it looked like a real tree. If you are to close to something you are painting, you will go crazy with the little details. Take a step back and squint at the thing and see if you notice the flaws, if not, leave it. The other trick that works well is getting a pair of binoculars and holding them backwards and look through them and see if you can see the flaws. No one is going to stand a foot or two away from the project looking at the little details. They will look at the project or room as a whole. You may notice the flaws or problems but if you don't point them out, no one will ever notice. It is similar to my "Secret Garden" room (click here for that post) when I painted the rocks in one direction and if I don't say anything, no one notices. So, I have tried to get better at not pointing out the flaws in my work and if I don't, others think it is great. :-) We are always our own worst critics!
You can see that I took the branches out on the wall all the way to the window. I also hung all her little characters that are key chains or the ones she got in the happy meals at Mcdonalds etc. I just clipped them to the branches of the tree so it looked like Owl had his friends around.
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