Mural: Friends are the Flowers

Inspiration: Since I had already created a family tree mural in my kitchen, I wanted to have some way to include friends on a wall in my home.  I thought why not include friends as flowers in a mural near our back door (since the wall space there was open with nothing eye catching).

How I Made It: I started by drawing out my thoughts for the ribbon on a piece of paper.  Then I drew it out life size on some butcher paper and used that as a template to draw the ribbons on the walls (it's two walls that surround the opening to the basement stairs).  Once I was satisfied with the ribbon in pencil, I painted it with a blue latex paint - several layers for the dark part and left the fold with only 1 layer of paint so it was lighter and made it look more 3-D.  I used a gold paint pen to do the lettering and to outline the ribbon.  The word on the left is "In the Garden of Life..." and on the right is "...Friends are the Flowers."

Then I started on the flowers.  My daughter also drew some and I used a rubbing technique to get her pencil marks on the wall and then finished drawing over them before painting.  All the flowers have been painted using acrylic paints.

In total so far, we drew and painted on 18 flowers.  As friends have visited, we've written their first names by a flower with a Gold Paint Pen.  As of today, all but 1 flower has a friend's name on it so the plan is to add at least 18 more flowers on the 2 walls over the next year.

More Photos: Thank to Amber of Blue Willow Photography for taking these additional photos of the mural.