Painting a Birch Tree Mural on our Dining Room Wall

A few years ago, we put up a bookshelf to divide our dining room, to make a small studio space as my Etsy and wholesale business grew. At the time, we backed the bookshelf with beadboard paneling. It was all the rage at the time, I even had beadboard wallpaper on some of our walls. Lately, it’s felt time for a change, and I started falling in love with the idea of birch tree wallpaper on that wall. I started pricing it out, and it was so expensive! I just couldn’t swallow the idea of spending almost $300-$400. When I started blogging, I had a mural and furniture painting business. I thought it was time to dust off some of my old skills, and paint a birch tree mural on our dining room wall. Here’s a peek at what it looked like earlier this year.

The one thing I needed to do was come up with an inexpensive way to cover the wall without a huge expense.The beadboard has a ridged surface, and would be impossible to paint on smoothly. Regular canvas was crazy expensive per yard, and I needed a lot! After looking at different options, I decided to staple bed sheets to the wall, and use it like a canvas.

After cutting king-size sheets to fit the wall, I used a staple gun to adhere the sheets, pulling them as  tightly as I could.

Now, a more patient artist would have gessoed or primed the sheet first. I am not that patient of an artist. Once they were up, I immediately used craft paints to start painting my birch trees (If you’re interested in learning how to paint birch trees, you can see this post here.).

Since I did not really prep my surface properly (like a good artist should), and the sheets sucked up slightly more paint than a regular wall or canvas, I needed a few more bottles of paint than I originally thought. I used Americana acrylic paints (affiliate link) in  Warm White, Soft Sage, Sand Gray.

The best part about using acrylic craft paint,  is that it dries right away.

I kind of love that by painting the birch tree mural on our dining room wall is kind of like coming around full circle for me. Painting murals  and furniture was such a huge part of how I got into my creative business. I’m so excited with how it looks, and I can’t wait to share the final result with you!

This post is not sponsored by DecoArt, even though I used their paints.

The post Painting a Birch Tree Mural on our Dining Room Wall appeared first on Jennifer Rizzo.

from
https://jenniferrizzo.com/2018/12/painting-a-birch-tree-mural-on-our-dining-room-wall.html