Cherry Blossom Tree Mural

When brainstorming decor for Claire's nursery, I felt inspired as soon as I saw this beautiful cherry blossom tree in a Pottery Barn Kids catalog. It's actually a decal that costs $174. Um, no thanks. "I can do that!" I thought. And so I did. I kept the catalog page close at hand, though; mainly because I knew my temptation would be to overdo it--probably twice as many branches and twice as many leaves, and I really liked the sparse look of this one. I started by sketching out the branches in chalk.

I then painted in the trunk and branches with latex paint. (I bought a quart of brown latex paint at Lowes, thinking it would take a lot. It definitely did not. Two little bottles of acrylic probably would have done it. Anyway...) I thought I would do a second coat, adding some highlights to make it more realistic, but the one coat over the yellow walls actually gave it a nice, textured-look better than I could replicate, I think. Before I added the leaves, the tree had a cool, Halloween/Winter vibe. 

Next step: leaves, again with my PBK page in hand to avoid spoiling the sparse look. And again, I overestimated the amount of paint that would be necessary. I bought two little bottles of acrylic, and it only took half of one. I did do two coats on the leaves, since any spot overlapping branch showed the brown through it.

 And, last step, adding the flowers in pink and white acrylic. (I turned the flash off for these photos since the walls looked so stark with the flash on. The actual yellow of the walls is somewhere between the pics above and below!)

So that's the finished product! I'll share a more complete version of the nursery when it's all done!

And to anyone visiting from the "31 days" link-up, welcome! I'm Jessica, and this is The Parsonage Family. My husband is a pastor and I work in Christian publishing. We recently moved and were able to purchase our own house, so we no longer technically live in a parsonage, but eh, details. We have a 2 1/2 year old daughter, Kate, and Baby Claire is due on October 30, thus the 31 Days of Baby!