Tropical Garden Mural

Tropical Garden Mural
The Artful Stencil project by Joni Prittie
If you have ever longed for a quiet time on a remote tropical island,
this may be the project for you. Our tropical garden mural project with
wild ginger, bird of paradise, fragrant orchids and beautiful lemon
white cockatoos sets the mood for your very own island sanctuary.
This mural has endless variations.
You can use just the lush leaves in our tropical collection to create a true
jungle feeling. We even have a sweet little monkey! You can use our
stencils to create a border around the top of walls, trailing the leaves
here and there.
Of course, furniture is also a great surface for stenciling. When
stenciling on furniture, be sure to use an appropriate paint for
the surface to be stenciled. Water based paints are good on
pieces painted with a base coat of acrylic or water based paints.
Use oil based paints on furniture that has been treated with an
oil base paint.
Tropical Garden Mural
Stenciling a Mural Basics
Because each mural is an individual art project, determined by your room size,
furniture, windows and lighting, here are the basics of creating a mural using
stencils from The Artful Stencil collection.
Mural Materials:
Stencils of your choice. Our tropical collection stencils are featured in this
project - Cocatoo, Orchid 1, Gnger and Bird of Paradise were used. It is
amazing how large a mural one can design with only four stencils!
Acrylic paint - enough paint to stencil your colors consistently. If you are
mixing colors, be sure to have enough to stencil all the flowers in that
color range. Mixing colors in a small jar is a great idea.
Wall paint - It is an excellent idea to have an amount of your wall paint for touch up
around stencil shapes in case stencil has any bleed areas.
Stencil brushes - medium and large
blue painter's tape - paper towels and small bowl of water for brush cleaning pencil if you need to mark stencil placement -med watercolor brush for touchup
Step 1
Measure the wall to be decorated and take into consideration how your
mural design will work with furniture placement.
Step 2
Choose a mural "theme". This can be as simple as a single stencil repeated
in the same or coordinating colors on the wall or an all over garden mural such
as our tropical garden.
Select the stencils you feel really work together. Remember that a stencil
such as our bird of paradise flowers can be turned over and stenciled with
the flowers facing in the reverse direction. This allows for an area to be
"framed" by the design.
Measure the size of your stencil/s and be sure the scale of the stenciled
image will work for your wall space.
Note: We used our orchid stencil as a repeat around the framed wall hanging
and stenciled extra single orchids to fill in the design.
Tropical Garden Mural
Step 3
Begin by using blue painter's tape to secure stencil to the wall. Tape around
stencil edges and in the case of a large stencil, pieces of tape can be placed
across some of the stencil holes and removed as you stencil. This will secure
the stencil tightly to the wall. You will be using your paint on a vertical surface,
so use very little paint on the stencil brush to avoid drips.
We began on the left side of the bed
and taped a ginger and bird of paradise
stencil in place. After stenciling these
two flowers, we flipped the ginger
stencil over (after cleaning with warm
water and drying the stencil), placed
the reversed stencil on the wall above
our first ginger and gave height to the
garden.
Proceed in this manner, stenciling a
flower, moving the stencil to your next
position and stenciling the design
again.
Tropical Garden Mural on Purple Wall
Note: It is good to remember that
the feeling of a garden mural is fresh and plants grow to different heights. The
placement of floral stencils for such a mural can be much looser than say, a
Colonial border in a very traditional room.
Step 4
When mural is complete, use small
amount of wall paint to clean up any drips
or uneven edges around stenciled shapes.
Walls are often daunting when beginning a mural.
Begin in a corner or along the floor board and
build the mural upward.
It just seems to be a good place to start.
Remember...
Its only paint. Any section you are not happy
with can be simply
painted out with your wall paint.
Happy Stenciling!
Tropical Garden Mural on Gold Wall
copyright - Joni Prittie 2011