This stuff isn't easy! Part 2: The Tree

Ok, here was my big project - which was a bigger headache than I would have thought.

First, an overview of how it's done:
1. Tape together the two peices the mural comes in:

2. Tape carbon paper to the back - of course, there was only enough for one side at a time...we wouldn't want this to be over quickly now, would we?

3. Decide where you want the tree to go and tape it to the wall (this is where I thought I wanted the tree to go - see how I lined the bottom of the tree up with the floor - it seemed like a good idea at the time...)

4. Trace the tree pattern with a ball-point pen so the design copies onto the wall

Can you see it? Well, trust me, there's the outline of a tree there. I untapped everything and put it all back in the shipping tube to store for another day. It was at this point I said to myself...."huh, that looks low...." Then I got out the dimentions of the crib and saw that the top of the crib would be about halfway up the branches - this is NOT what I wanted!!! Oh S#$%! I just spent nearly 2 hours tracing the tree TOO LOW. After literally beating myself up (if you've ever been a witness to an official Kathy breakdown, it's not pretty). I got out the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and thankfully was able to pretty easily erase the lines. Of course, if you've ever worked with one of those things you know they take off a good layer of paint with them. So after scrubbing the wall I had to give it another coat of paint.

While the paint dried I finished putting the grass up and touching up the baseboard paint - so the afternoon wasn't a total loss. I'll put pics up of all that fun at the end (that project actually went really well). Anyway, the tree - take 2! This time we put the mural up at the TOP of the wall - you may notice that small piece of tape indicating where the crib will be to make sure I didn't screw it up again :P

I made sure to keep the original bottom of the tree unerased so I could just match up the trunks - you know to avoid the "tree floating in mid-air" look. So I did all that other crap I did the first time and was able to be all traced and done by the end of Saturday - whew!

On Sunday I painted in the trunk of the tree and branches with a lovely chocolate brown:

I started work on the leaves, which will be a more artistically challenging job, but nice none the less - here's a sneak peek:

Since I'm having trouble adding the grass pics to this entry (probably too many pics already) I'll add them to the picket fence one.