Burlap & Denim

Hopefully you were able to read Part 1 of this mural series before you landed here.  OK, now that we are all on the same page, here is Part 2.

Is that a mural?  Well yes, to me it is.  When I first moved into my house I had two boys that would be sharing a room.  I knew I wanted something totally boy.  We had visited a U.S. Air Force museum with my husband’s family earlier that year and I was in love with the old graphics found on the airplanes.  This one especially.

It was so clean, crisp and vintage.  I later found out they put this symbol on the airplanes to make sure our allies didn’t shoot us down at war.  I decided on a vintage airplane theme.  Yes, I do theme kids rooms.  Why not?  After all, I have four boys, they can switch rooms and have a whole new feeling.  It drives me crazy when a TV designer says, lets do a child’s room so they can “grow” with the design.  Where is the fun in that?  I love to design, decorate, and

RE-decorate my kids rooms.

Back to the how to.  I took a photo of the airplanes while we were at the museum in 2004.  Look how tiny my boys were back then!

Here are some of the graphics painted on the planes

that I fell in love with.

I love the light gray background, mustard stripes and

navy and white block lettering.

I have had big plans for this airplane over a radar looking world map.  I LOVE this one.  I bought a table round top made of particle board from Lowe’s, painted it white and planned to paint this on it and hang it somewhere, but still haven’t gotten around to it.

 How cool is this Indian?  I’m not sure why there is an Indian on this plane, maybe a nod to the Navajo Code Talkers?  Whatever the reason, it’s awesome.

Here is the image that stopped me in my tracks.  I know, so simple, but it said what I wanted to say.

Simple, classic, crisp, American, masculine.

For this mural, I printed off this photo on an overhead projector sheet (set on a blank sheet of white paper for this photo).  I could only find a box of 50 for around $45, if you aren’t using a lot of overhead projector sheets, go to Kinko’s and they’ll print it for around $1 a sheet.

Put the transparency on the projector and center it on the wall.  For this mural I lightly traced the circle and star in pencil.  For the stripes, I used the projector as the starting point but a laser level makes this even easier.  I set up the laser on the top stripe and taped it off one stripe at a time.

You’ll need 3 quarts of paint and sponge brush if you do this design.  It took 4 coats of paint for the white and red to look right.

Here is the final wall.  I made the star large and high so that my son’s slide bed would fit underneath it.  I also extended the stripes all the way to the end of the walls.

I love the graphic so much, that I have changed the “theme” of this room to Indian Jones but left the star and stripes.  I think I could take it in a lot of different directions, it also reminds me of an

old gasoline logo.

I hope that you feel more confident in your abilities to do your own mural.  Be sure to incorporate laser levels and overhead projectors to make your mural even easier and have a professional look.

Linked up: Tatertots & Jello

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