Do you sometimes look through magazines like House and Garden and wish you could have the beautifully textured walls featured on the pages? If you have even a little of the artist in you, you can paint your own design on your walls.
Be Your Own Interior Decorator
Get a paintbrush and some distemper paint, a couple of potatoes, rubber gloves and bits of sponge. Then just follow these easy steps.
1. Match your colours. What is the colour of the wall? If it's green, don't use red paint. Red is much too loud and clashes with green. Instead, try yellow, pink or blue. Then look at the colour of your furnishings. You will need basic knowledge about which colours complement and clash with each other. Try getting hold of a colour wheel to make this simpler for you. If you like glitter, gather your guts and go for it. Glitter looks wonderful by sunlight and artificial light. It sets off any glittering object in the room.
2. Choose a suitable base colour to create the base pattern on the wall. You may get the shade you want ready-made from a store, or you could create your own by mixing two shades of acrylic distemper which is washable since it's plastic-based. You could also get liquid tints that you can add to the distemper. Tints are also available in hardware stores.
3. Get a bit of sponge and punch some random holes into it – just rip out some of the sponge. Later you will dip it into the paint and stamp into the wall in whatever pattern you like. The idea is to create a uniform wallpaper-like effect.
4. Paper the floor with newspaper so you don't have to scrub the paint off the floor later. Put on your gloves and mix the paint in a small, plastic bucket. Stir thoroughly for five minutes with a stick. Dilute the paint with a little water. Not too much or the paint will be too thin and will drip down the wall, ruining your pattern.
5. Stand back and stare at the wall. Remove any pictures or dust from the wall. Which patterns do you think will look good on the wall? Flowers? A motif? Whatever the design, you can carve it into one half of a large potato and use it on the wall instead of a sponge. A sponge will give you an indeterminate design, but the carved potato can create a highly defined impression. Your pattern will depend on the nature of the room. For example, is it a study room or the children's room? I painted dragons and fairies on the walls of my study because I love writing fantasy.
6. Dip the sponge into the paint or put some paint into the line drawing carved on the potato and stamp the wall with it. Make sure to squeeze the paint out of the sponge or it will drip down the wall. Carry on till you've covered the wall.
7. Add anything else you like to the wall once the wall is completely dry (wait a day). You could paint in figures (I painted a forest scene on the wall above the stairs to create the impression of walking into the woods). Or do some jiggles on the walls with tubes of glitter and neon paint (commonly used to jazz up T-shirts).
Do-it-Yourself Home Decor
Your wall mural will stay that way forever if you like. The paint won't fade either. So texture your walls yourself. Give them your personal touch and have fun doing it.
Anita Saran - Anita Saran leads a rich life that encompasses the world of advertising and fiction writing- she has been writing copy for more than 27 ...
