Jungle Nursery Mural by Numbers

(USA)

Before our little one was born, we didn't know the sex so we designed a jungle theme that was gender neutral.

The main showpiece of the room is a hand-painted mural. We used a product from the company Elephants on the Wall. It's basically a paint-by-number system. The kit came with a graphic large enough to fit on a medium size wall. It was broken up into four vertical chunks. It also came with carbon paper.

The first step is to transfer the design onto the wall. You tape the carbon paper and graphic to the wall. Then, with a pencil, you trace the graphic (hopefully with a steady hand). When you're finished, you take down the graphic and the paper and see the design lightly etched into the wall.

The kit also has a picture and paint colors that correspond to a major craft paint company. We hunted for the right paint colors. Sometimes we had to find equivalent colors from other companies. Eventually, we found all of them.

Next we started painting. Using just standard acrylic paint brushes and a lot of elbow grease, we painstakingly filled in the mural. You know which colors go where based on the numbering scheme.

It took us between two to five coats of each color, depending on how dark it was. When it was finished, we had a beautiful jungle for our daughter. Now that she’s a little older we say goodnight each evening to the animals. She loves when we make all the animals sounds! It was a lot of work, but completely worth it!