Wall Art - the Process.....

So I promised  a post on the step-by-step process that went into the wall art in Heidi's room - so here it is:

I knew that I wanted to somehow stencil a large damask pattern on the wall above her bed, so I first spent about 2 hours Googling "damask stencils" to find one large enough to cover the space above her bed.  When that search was fruitless (I found lots of damask stencils, but none big enough), I went another (more labor-intensive) route.

I purchased a damask stencil from Michael's (this particular stencil is comprised of 2 identical stencils, but I just used one side, since I only wanted one pattern on the wall):

I then tried transferring the stencil onto a piece of paper by using black paint on white craft paper, but that was a disaster (the paint bled like crazy).  So, I resorted to the more labor-intensive process of transferring the stencil to a white piece of cardboard using a black Sharpie:

Here's how it looked when I was finished:

Then, I had the good folks at Staples convert this picture into a transparency for me for under $5 (see where I'm going with this?):

 (please forgive the picture quality - the bright spot in the middle of the transparency is from my flash)

Then, courtesy of my sister, who at the time was an elementary school teacher, I borrowed one of these dinosaurs (it wasn't being used in a classroom, since teachers nowadays are much more high-tech than this - it was collecting dust in a storage closet, so I was happy to put it to good use for a weekend!):

image courtesy of wikipedia

Picture the wall above her crib acting as the "screen" in this case - I balanced the projector atop several textbooks, which were then balanced atop her changing table, in order to project the image at the appropriate height and not skew any of the sides.  I then proceeded to "color in" the shadows cast by the transparency with a small paintbrush and white paint.  It ended up taking about 3 coats of white paint to fully cover the green wall color, and it was definitely a TEDIOUS process which required very steady hands, but I think it was totally worth it in the end: