The sign that I am committed to this project: the work table is set up!. Already being filled with stuff, I have my collection of images and paint supplies. Very important to leave a little bit of room left for a cup of coffee.

The plan is to mimic the arches in Madeline's room but not devote the whole wall to them. I decided that the perspective in this room is going to be from the boat floating out on the sea in Maddie's room. These windows are the portholes on the boat and we will be looking up at the castle. First step is to tape off the windows before painting in the background.

The tape is off of the mural border and the first coat of paint is on the arches. Sooooo close to being done!

I think I am ready to peal the tape off the mural borders and paint the arches.

Totally had a Bob Ross moment while painting the frogs. I keep looking at them and thinking to myself "damn I'm good!" :D

Took a bunch of mural photos this morning. I think I'm done with the wisteria and nearly done with the castle. The tree panel is nearly complete. Still have to complete a flowering shrub, lily flowers, castle window, couple of frogs & fairies, a dragon and the railing. So close & yet so far!

I've done some work on the castle and the peacock. Enjoy!

Got a 40min walk in, house cleaning, baked cookies, some sewing done, played with Miss Maddie, cooked a couple of meals, and worked on Maddie's mural a bit.

I got a couple more days of work into Maddie's murals and Hunter has taken updated pics. Some parts have come along nicely, some not so much and are giving me trouble. I'll work through it I'm sure; it's just gonna take more time and many more layers of paint. :)

Hunter told me about a top coat paint that he had read about that is supposed to protect walls from crayons and pens. I'm not sure if I'm going to that yet. I would be a little worried about it changing color over time.

I've debated taking commissions for painting murals on large sheets of masonite for people to install into their rooms. But the cost for my work would be really expensive so I don't think many people would be willing to buy them. i would make more money working at a 7/11. :P

Got some more progress on Maddie's mural today. Thank you Hunter for taking pictures. :)

I texture painted the walls of the room with a sponge painting technique and applied two colors on top of the original room color. I just wadded up a plastic bag and dabbed the paint onto the wall. I used three colors; the room was originally painted a darker tan and I added a medium tan and then a light tan/white on top. With only two colors it didn't look very good. I think the 3rd color was necessary to create depth.

If every doing this painting technique, I strongly recommend wearing gloves and working the whole space at the same time. Despite my turning the bag around a lot, patterns would still form (probably my technique changing) and so I had to move around the room randomly to keep the texture even overall. It took me four hours to apply the first layer and 3 hours for the second.