I have a big empty wall in my living room. I used to have these two large paintings hanging there, and they were nice. But those paintings have moved on and I needed to fill the space.
First. I broke up the expanse of the wall by adding some board and batten trim. I have this in a few other places so it’s a consistent feature in my house. I painted the top of the wall with DIY chalk paint. I wanted the look of bare cardboard, so I used regular brown wall paint with some leftover grout powder mixed in. I kept adding grout to the paint until it was sufficiently dusty looking for my plans.
Sealing the paint with a layer of chalk.
With chalk paint, before you draw anything on it, you want to completely cover it with a layer of chalk, and then wipe that off. This seals the surface so that your designs are erasable. I’m using plain old white chalk from the dollar store. Yes, I do wish there wasn’t an air grate in the middle of the wall. I just pretend it’s not there.
The first mural I did was the end of summer so I drew sunflowers.
Summer wall mural with sunflower design.
I kept the sunflowers up for about 4 months! I wiped it off in January, and after some pondering I decided to do birch trees for winter. I was inspired by this wallpaper by Max Humphrey.
Will I keep redrawing this chalk wall forever? Probably not. It takes me a few days to finish the design each time, and I think I’ll get tired of doing it. It’s been a good experiment though — I wasn’t sure if I wanted a bold design on the wall and I’m still not sure haha. So I’m glad it’s not permanent.
But it’s fun for now. Spring is coming soon, what should I draw next?