Totoro Nursery

Jennifer was born (rather early) in December and I have just finished decorating her nursery, so here are the pictures in stages.

Lets start with how it was done.
Firstly I found images online etc that I wanted and drew them onto acetate sheets then projected them onto the wall.  This is the first projection on the main wall.

Next I used a very fine brush and black matt paint to draw on the outlines.

Halfway done without projector on

Halfway done with projector on to show me whats next...

And the final outlines all done

So of course we need to add some colour to this too

And then the Totoro

And the tree branch

And finally just went over the outlines to make it neater and then it was finished.  All the colours were mixed from matt wall pain and some poster paint to try and get the shades right. 

Above the door Ive put a Mei and kittenbus going for a walk

This time I did the outline with a marker pen

meeeooowww

Hey lets go!

And now for the third wall, I decided on a tree with little surprises hidden among the leaves 

This is the acetate I drew out from a tree image I found online  

There are 5 little Totoro images hiding in the tree, so after projecting the tree acetate and drawing the outline in pencil, I did these little fellas.  The projector however wouldnt make the images as small as I needed, so i used the old school pencil transfer method.  I first drew round the outlines of printouts from the web (in thick pencil) and then put the paper on the wall, image facing in, and scribbled on the back of it.  This transfers the outline I drew onto the wall and you get a faint image like this....

I then used a superfine marker to go over the images, and the a paint brush just as fine to colour them in.

You cant see the outline but its there

And this is once I'd painted in the wood part of the tree

And I started adding leaves.  This was done by cutting out a rough leaf shape from a kitchen sponge and dipping it in the mixed leaf colour.  This didn't make a perfect image but was basically to add some uniformity to the size and shape.  All i had to do then was paint over with the same colour to sharpen the edges and take away the blotchyness

And some falling leaves for affect

I am so pleased with how this worked out, It took a lot of time and a lot of effort but its worth it seeing the final result. still need to work on some furnishings to match but the decor is finally done.