Here is an update on the tree that I painted on Milo’s wall. It all didn’t quite go as planned, but I kind of like the result. My very first idea was to buy a tree wall decal and save all the work of painting. Then I decided against spending money and for painting. But, I didn’t want to risk to free-style it, so I went to look for inspiration on Pinterest and Dr. Google. This is what I was intending to replicate, minus the owl:

When I started drawing the outline on the wall with a pencil (chalk would have been better, but didn’t have any on hand), I realized that I didn’t really care for the curvy branches and wanted to keep the tree more straight and edgy. In the course of changing the direction of this tree an entire eraser lost its life and I did end up free-styling the thing.

On this photo you can see some of the corrected outlines and how I generously ignored them when filling in with paint:

After the entire tree was filled in with dark brown paint (took me about 2 hours), it looked like this:

A little bit coniferous for a leafy tree, but exactly the clean and streamlined look I was hoping to get. Then it became time to eliminate the coniferosity by adding the leaves. I wanted to use three colors that are part of the room theme: lime green, yellow, and teal. To save some time and achieve a more uniform look, I decided to make a stamp out of good old potatoes. Failllll! I guess the wall was a little bit too hard and uneven, so the stamp only produced half a splotchy leaf.

So I had to change my strategy again and painted the leaves all by hand. It didn’t even take that long and turned out just fine. Tadaaa, here is the final end result:

Milo’s reaction when he first saw the tree was priceless and worth all the hand-painting. His eyes lit up and many awwws and wows kept coming for the next 10 minutes. Happy baby, happy mommy.

The entire project took about 6 hours (2 hours drawing outline, 2 hours filling in the trunk and branches, 2 hours for the leaves) and cost $4 bucks. I only had to buy the yellow paint, all other were remainders from previous projects and the stash that the previous homeowner left behind.

How do you guys like it?