Painting a Fantasy Mashup Nursery Mural
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…
JK more like back in August 2021, one of my sister’s best friends reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in painting a mural in their new nursery, as they were expecting a baby girl soon. Of course, I said heck yes! Unbeknownst to them, I had just transitioned my business to only murals a few weeks prior. After painting the guitar for ArtReach, I was actually disappointed with my lack of mural projects and felt behind the goals I had set for myself. I was at a low point of accepting that I might not reach them, so I decided to update my website with only mural work… and then my phone buzzes, and what do you know, a mural opportunity!
Sometimes clients come to me with specific ideas, and other times I think it’s hard for them to even imagine all the possibilities of what their mural could be. After some discussion, they decided that they wanted a mural that embodied three of their favorite literary adventure stories: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. They didn’t want to incorporate any specific characters, so I mainly focussed on landscapes and scenery. They also wanted a smaller bookshelf tree on the opposite wall and were torn between having the main color be purple or blue.
So with all this information, I requested two things: photos of the walls I would be painting and their dimensions. The photos would help me transpose my illustration onto the wall to create a mockup and help them visualize my idea. The dimensions also help me figure out how much paint I will need and thus help me come up with a pricing estimate. I used the free mural pricing guide from Pandr to calculate costs and gave the clients three price tiers to choose from. The price tiers included one full detailed mural (7 layers) with bookshelf tree, a less detailed mural (4 layers) plus bookshelf tree, and finally a less detailed mural with no tree. I’ve found that including variations helps people process their own visions and expectations.
Now onto the research stage. It did not take long to find a plethora of Star Wars mural ideas for kids and/or nurseries. There are a ton of companies that appear to sell wall stickers or wallpaper to even create this sort of effect that they all have. These mostly focused on scenery and consisted of a one-color gradient fading into the background. In concept, that type of mural seemed pretty easy to me so I took that as my starting ground. I then took to google and searched for the most iconic locations within each story. I’ll admit I’ve never watched Lord of the Rings, so I wasn’t totally confident in my selection, but I don’t think I could go wrong with including that eye thing (lol, I’m sorry). After gathering all my reference images, I opened a canvas in Procreate with roughly the same size ratio as the wall I’d be painting and started creating layers of color.
7 layers - full price
4 layers - less than full price
Blue bookshelf tree
Since it didn’t seem like my clients had a preference between blue or purple, I chose blue and started laying out all the elements. It’s important to note that these sketches are for ideation purposes and look rough on purpose. It’s something that gives the client the full picture without adding all the detail since that will happen on the wall. Please note that for some projects, you will have to render a fully detailed mockup. Since these were family friends who knew my artistic ability, I knew they’d be ok with a rough mockup. It took some time, but I settled on a design that felt balanced and saved it as my full sketch. I then took out a few layers of blue and reorganized the illustration for the lesser detailed version I offered. The tree was the easiest to sketch up and I included markers for where the shelves would be. After saving all these images, I opened them up in Photoshop and created these rough mockups.
After sending all of these images with price estimates, I switched the color to purple at their request and the mockup was approved! We then picked a date for installation and worked out all the payment deets.
As it turns out, baby Maya did not want to wait and she was born only a couple of weeks before the installation date. But, after double-checking, we continued with the plan! My goal for this mural was to complete it in one weekend, Friday to Sunday. So Friday around noon I showed up at their house to drop off all of my supplies. This was also the first time I was able to see both walls in person and wow was the mural wall much bigger than I’d thought! I then took a microfiber towel and wiped down both walls and taped up all the edges. Something else to note about this room is that there were three larger pieces of furniture that I had to sort of maneuver around. After I added myself, a stool, ladder, and tub full of paint, that room was tight! It felt like I was doing gymnastics all weekend moving through that room. The last thing I wanted to do at their house was to take a photo of a rug they’d bought for the nursery. They wanted the purples to match so I took this photo straight to home depot to pick up some paint!
I’m going to preface this next part by saying that estimating how much paint is needed per project is not my strong suit, and I have a bunch of paint leftover from this mural. Whoops!
When I got to home depot, I thought I would start by picking out paint swatches and finding 7 shades of purple that I thought flowed well as a gradient. I then picked up three gallons of paint in the lightest, middle, and darkest shade. I also picked up some extra rollers, a quart of light green paint, and four 1/2 quart-sized containers and lids. My thought was that I would mix these three shades together to come up with the four in-between. What I did not consider, was that for house paints, it’s actually easier to lighten a shade than it is to darken it with a mixed house paint color. I ended up using some extra white house paint I had lying around to lighten up a couple of the colors.
Back at home, I laid out all my supplies and began mixing the purples together to create my in-between shades. Once I thought I had all seven colors to the shade I wanted, I painted each as a strip on a small piece of canvas. After observing the colors dry, I decided to lighten up the darkest layer. I then packed up all the materials I needed for Saturday and placed them into my car. I also made sure to charge my headphones and make sure that I prepared any images I was going to sketch onto the wall using my projector.
Saturday morning I arrived at the nursery around 9 am and began painting. Since the mural had seven different shades of purple, I measured the height of the wall and divided it by seven. This helped me figure out where to place each layer. Once I had sketched out each layer of mountains, I began painting! I started with the lightest shade of purple and used a paint roller to apply the color. I then went down the wall painting each corresponding layer with a roller after going around the edges with a straight edge.
After I had the main wall covered in one layer of purple, I turned my attention to the opposite wall and used my projector to trace the tree I had sketched out on my iPad. I think you should know that as an artist, sometimes we just have to make things work. In order to use my projector for this project, I mostly had to balance it on one of the steps of my ladder. I used painter’s tape to help me feel like it was secure… but I made it work! Outlining the bookshelf tree was quick and afterward, I took a short lunch break.
In the afternoon, my main goals were to get all the main elements like the eye, Hogwarts castle, hobbit house, train, and at-ats onto the wall using my projector. I used chalk to outline all of these elements and afterward I painted them their corresponding color based on which layer they came from. By the end of the day, I had most of these elements painted and had painted the tree body on the opposite wall. Towards the end of the day, it became clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to use my projector on the highest layer. So, pivoting, I decided that I would create stencils for those elements. It also became clear to me at the end of Saturday that the darkest layer I had mixed was too similar to the shade above it. Even though I was tired and didn’t want to, I made a mental note to darken the bottom layer on Sunday.
That night I used my projector and taped up some paper onto a wall to trace the death star, dragon, and Griffen I wanted on the top layer. After tracing, I used an Exacto knife and scissors to cut out the elements.
Sunday morning I arrived around 10 am and started by taping up my stencils and outlining them onto the wall. I then took the second lightest shade and painted in the details. After repainting the seventh layer a darker shade I went in and added details like the whomping willow, clumps of trees, tie fighters, and some pew pews from the AT-ATs. I then added my signature and date to the bottom right-hand corner.
My last task of the day was to paint the leaves onto the bookshelf tree. I started with the shade of green I’d gotten from Home Depot and painted roughly 1/3 of them. I then mixed a darker shade and painted roughly 1/3 and finally mixed a lighter shade and painted the rest of them. The green leaves needed two coats of paint, unlike the purple which had great coverage and only needed one. By the time I was finished painting, it was around 4 pm and I immediately began cleaning. 30 minutes later I was ready to share the final murals with my clients!
As usual, I was nervous for them to see the finished product, but they were blown away! After a few minutes of appreciating my work, I packed my supplies back into my car and left them with a tub of paint for the bookshelf tree. They had bought three white floating shelves and wanted to paint them purple to match, before attaching them to the wall. And luckily before leaving I was able to hold baby Maya! She was so small and I felt like I couldn’t move once she was placed into my lap. I’m not around babies too often so I was a little taken aback holding something so small.
Later that evening, even though I was exhausted, I decided to put together a quick TikTok showing the before and after of my mural. Somehow within hours, it had over 500,000 views and after a few months, that number has risen to 2.3 million! The video I posted was full of positive and exciting comments, some even saying they wanted to get pregnant just so they could have a nursery like this. No joke! Getting that flood of validation was altogether exciting, overwhelming, and exhausting. It was an immediate wave of positivity that reassured me in my decision to transition to mural projects, but it was also challenging to stay in that positive headspace when the comments ceased… but I think that’s a discussion for a whole other blog post!
Overall, I’m very proud of this mural. This was the first full-wall painting I’ve done and it felt great to promise something and be able to exceed even my own expectations with the final result. I hope baby Maya loves growing up in her room and learns to love the adventure stories just like her parents! As for me, I hope this is only the beginning of my mural journey.
May the force be with you, Becca
MURALS INSPIRED BY THIS FANTASY DESIGN
“Will you just look at the masterpiece [my husband] has created, inspired by the amazing Becca Dwyer Design for Lilibeth’s bedroom!? He’s poured his heart and soul into this and it really shows. I love it so much and we are never decorating this room ever again. - Steph Harley
“I saw the beautiful fantasy-inspired mural that you painted and I was OBSESSED. I saved it and kept coming back to the idea for months. We decided to use it as inspiration for our own nursery, and wanted to say thank you for sharing your art and creativity across platforms.” - Ianna Drew