Back in 2010, my husband and I received the news he and I had been waiting for most of our lives. We were expecting our first child in May of 2011. We were both over the moon as we had struggled for more than 5 years to get pregnant,and at our age our window of opportunity was closing fast. I had dreamed about this moment for most of my life. I wanted to do something special for him or her to welcome our little bundle of joy into the world. I decided to try something new, sure I like to draw and paint, but I had never attempted a wall mural like I had planned.
The truth is working on her nursery gave me an outlet to channel all my nervous energy. Having waited for so long, I was full of worry. This like most of my projects, distracted my over active mind nicely and channeled that nervous energy into something positive. I wanted to stay neutral as far as theme. My sister-in-law gave us a swing from the Fisher Price Rain forest Friends collection and I loved it! The brightly colored animals and whimsical feel was exactly what I had in mind. I started to plan. I went online and decided which animals I would draw and got started right away. Her room needed a total make over. We planned on tearing up the old carpet and putting in new, but wanted to get the painting done first to avoid any mess. I work full-time, so every day I would put in my 8 hours, come home and my goal was to paint an animal every night. I would bring my laptop into the room, put on the radio, and pull up a picture of one of the rain forest characters and get to work. I wish I could say that I followed a special technique, but I simply took a pencil and freehand drew the outline and then used acrylics to paint and fill in the color. I used the pictures of the animal characters on my laptop as a guide. I could have used a projection tool to make it perfect, but that was not my goal. I wanted it to be based on those characters, but by drawing free hand, they would have a bit of their own individuality.
When it was done I was pleased at how it turned out. It was not perfect, but unlike most things that I do that are flawed it didn’t bother me this time. I was happy that my first attempt at a wall mural had turned out so well! Now, Our daughter is 2 and I will inevitably face the day when she feels that she needs a “big girl room” and I will have to paint over monkey’s and tigers and replace them with princess’s and castles, but for now I am still enjoying the colorful jungle!

Finished Mural.

smiling (as usual) enjoying her Rainforest Friends Room age 9 months.