Painting a Mountain!

I have had the idea to paint a mountain mural on the wall of my living room for quite some time now but never really worked up the motivation to do it until this month. My sister came home one day and told me about an August promotion Ace Hardware was doing on the paint sample pints. The sale is each one is a dollar instead of the normal five dollars up to four per person with no repeats of colors. Easy enough rules to follow and that is an incredible deal! So I got the motivational spark I needed. The mural is an eight color piece not including the background wall color so I moseyed on over to Ace and had a look at their color swatch wall. It didn't take me very long to figure out what colors I wanted so then it was more which four do I get now and which four do I come back for another day this week. I have now gone several times and have not just the colors for my mural but also colors for my front door and my hallway. Including a few extras in colors I don't already own because then I can do small projects as they pop into my head and not have to head out for paint. Plus you can't really beat that sale price even if I go nuts and buy even more it will still be cheaper than buying the original eight mural colors I needed. (This is what I tell myself every time I buy more paint this month)

 
So I had my inspiration and my color swatches. Before painting I got my tarp out and taped the door frames so it could stay white. Taping is tricky so take your time. Some tools I used were a mallet to close my paint cans between dying because it wouldn't be good if they dried out and also I like to give the cans a little shake before opening them to make sure the color is mixed up good, a light so if the sun starts to fade you still have a way to see, different size paint brushes to use on different sections varying in size and of course your paint colors!

 

Then you just go for it. I hand painted every layer two to three coats each depending on how splotchy it is/you want it to be. No right or wrong way of doing this because it is yours. I decided to draw on my wall a rough outline of where I thought each mountain should go starting at the floor and working up. Then I painted it from the top working down going from lightest color to the darkest because then if I made anything bigger than I wanted or painted out of the lines the darker color I would paint next would cover it right up.

Layer by layer I grew more and more pleased with it. I would say painting time would be about an hour for each color since they are each a few coats while drying time was varied depending on the size of that mountain range. Overall a long but fun project that I am so excited to see every time I walk into my house.

Thanks for reading! TTFN!