Hello Hello! Dana here- I’m so happy to finally share this project with you! It’s been a work in progress since spring. Back in April, I was feeling like I needed to let some of my creativity out. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just gotta create something fun. It’s like this itch that I have to scratch. My day job as an event planner is pretty cool, but it doesn’t always let me get my creative juices flowing. I swear I was meant to be an artist. So with all of that being said, all I wanted for my Earth Day Birthday was to have a whole day where I got to play my jams and create something grand/bold/beautiful/different and just get lost in the process of making. And my sweet sweet David was happy make my birthday wish come true and arrange everything for me. He said he would be my “design assistant” and help with whatever I needed to make my artistic vision happen. So here’s what we did:

I’ve always been inspired by Houston’s street art and murals. Here’s a website that lists them all! Thanks Carrie! I love going out and finding new ones. I’ve even contemplated the idea of reaching out to a local artist and asking them to paint whatever they wanted on my house. Buuuuut, that may be taking it too far and what would the neighbors think?! Am I even allowed to do such a thing? Probably a bad idea, but that gives you a view into my crazy mind. I totally be someone who lives in a house like these:

It’s only here lately that I’ve thought to myself- Why don’t I try it? I mean, I could come up with a simple do-able design! I’ve always wanted to paint something on a grand scale- why not give it a try? What’s the harm in trying? Just do it already!

But where? I’m not a professional graffiti artist! I can’t just go out paint something on a side of a random building! Bbbuuttt…I do own a building…there’s a little building in my own back yard! I set my sights on the garage. Here’s what it looks like:

Pretty bleh huh? I could spice it up! I could add fun colors to it! But what colors and how? I want it to blend in with the rest of the backyard decor and color scheme, but still be slightly different. So I decided I needed my mural to include the poppy, magenta, marigold and coral colors that I used on the planter boxes. So I first started my color hunt in the spray paint section of Home Depot.

I picked up cans of what I already had, and then added in colors that would work well with them- mainly cool colors.

After I selected a my blues and greens, I headed over to the paint paint department to match my mediums.

And these are what I ultimately went home with:

I purchased quarts of the bright colors and a gallon of black.

I also purchased handy pails and some of those plastic pour thingies. In the end I found all you really needed was some good old Solo Cups.

As far as the pattern or mural design goes- I knew I didn’t want to paint the same geometric pattern that’s on the planter boxes. That would be too matchy matchty and geo overload. I thought about doing stripes, but that didn’t sit well either. Then I thought- What if I make it similar to the Buscuit Paint Wall? In case you don’t live in Houston or don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s what I mean:

It’s a semi-iconic mural selfie-wall off of Westheimer in Houston. At any point in the day, there’s tons of folks posing in front of it. I’ve always had a soft spot for the wall, and decided that it’s something that I could easily(ish) replicate.

As you can see from the video, I painted a base color of drippy black paint first.

I hindsight, I don’t know if the first layer of black was necessary. Towards the end of the project I found that I was trying to cover as much of the black paint with color.

The rest was pretty simple, I decided what colors I wanted next to one another, brought out the ladders and started pouring the paint. The trick to getting the paint to run is to mix it with water. I found that 60% paint and 40% water was just about right. When I globbed the paint on too thick, I just hit it with a squirt of water:

And here are some fun photos from the process:

The main thing is to just have fun with it an enjoy the process! It was so nice to experiment with the colors and watch them run into one another. It may not be a masterpiece worthy of the Hue Fest, but it makes me smile when I look out into the backyard and see all the happy colors.

Hope you enjoyed the post! Please let us know if you attempt anything like this- I’d love to see!