Sweet and Simple Wall Mural

Last week I spent a couple evenings out at Matt's sister and brother in laws' home, helping with the finishing touch of their daughter's nursery.  Sarah had asked me to paint a little something above Peyton's crib.

To tell the whole story, we have to go back to October--even before Peyton was born--to her baby shower.  I hosted a shower for Sarah and Peyton at our home.  The theme was "Sweet Dreams" complete with beds for tables, bedtime stories in lieu of cards and a midnight snack dessert table:

And in true Hannah fashion {I was my cheerleading squad's designated sign maker}, I made a butcher-paper sign with watercolors that said: "Sweet Dreams, Precious Peyton Ryan."  You can sort of see it below; although my chandelier {isn't it fabulous, by the way?} is hiding it:

I figured I would just throw the paper sign away at the end of the night, but Sarah took it home and hung it above Peyton's crib, where it stayed until last week.  After four months of looking at the paper sign, Sarah was ready for something more permanent.   However, she liked the look of it, so we decided to keep the words as it but make it look a little more sharp.

I'm posting this because #1 - I thought it turned out pretty nice #2 - I like reading about how other people do crafty things on their blogs and #3 - I don't have any recent pictures of Liam to post tonight :)

Nursery Mural Tutorial:

1. The first thing I did was mock up what I wanted it to look like in Word, including picking some cute fonts: "A Font With Serifs", "Sketch Block Bold" and "Clementine Sketch"-- all available for free download at dafont.com  Then I printed out the letters.  I cut them out individually and traced them to the wall. 

2. For the word "Sweet," I turned the page over and traced the letters in charcoal. 

3. Then I placed it on the wall where I wanted it and pressed firmly {I used the eraser end of a pencil} on the letters to transfer the charcoal to the wall.  I traced around the charcoal with pencil, then wiped the charcoal off.

4. After all of the letters were traced out, I began painting.

5. And painted, and painted and painted.  I added a moon, stars, clouds and a dot border.

6. Voila!