Ever since I started painting murals on different walls in our house, I've been itching to do something to the kids bathroom. In the past two years (yes two years) I have come up with a dozen different design ideas. I would get super excited about a few, but none of them really felt right for their bathroom. Also, a couple just seemed to complicated. I finally had this idea to do a topography mural. I quickly did a sketch on my ipad and I knew I found the right design. 

I was going to use paint brushes with the colors I wanted, but decided to use my favorite My Colorshot paint pens. They just happened to carry just the green colors I wanted. Using paint pens made this project so much easier than use open wet paint. Which would have been totally doable, but this was much quicker with the paint pens. 

I don't own a projector but have a friend who does so I borrowed hers. Again, this totally could have been hand sketched, but I think that would have been a much harder task. Using a projector to project my image made the whole process ten times quicker. It probably took me about an hour and a half to pencil on the design while using the projector.  

As for the image, I wish I could offer it here for free, but I pieced it together from maps I found online to customize it for my bathroom. But, I suggest finding a topography map and projecting it on your wall to see how it might look. If you have an ipad that you can sketch on, then you can sketch over any map to fit your space. It doesn't have to be perfect. My map actually didn't end up fitting the whole wall, but once the lines started going, it wasn't a problem just continuing the design on the wall itself.

Below are the simple steps I took to make the mural happen. 

Supplies:

Projector

Paint Pens or acrylic paint and brushes

I figured out my design and made sure it fit in the space. I then made sure I could project it digitally. 

Get a projector hooked up in your space. You probably can't project the whole image on your wall at one time. I had to do each segment in chunks. As you can see below, I tried to break the image up so I could easily match it up when I needed to move the projector up for the next spot. 

Trace your image on the wall with pencil before painting. You could probably paint, but I didn't want the project to get bumped or moved so I just figured I quickly pencil and paint later without worrying about it. 

Get your paint pens or paint and brushes and start painting your design. I did the lines randomly different colors. I didn't worry about creating a specific pattern, which made choosing which color to do next easier. 

And that's it!

I hope these tips and my process helps you out a bit!