My little pilot

Ok this project was not a recent one but I still worked hard on it! When Aaron and I first found out we were pregnant with a boy, I immediately knew I was going to do an airplane theme. In naming him Matthew Thomas it was a connection to both our families (Matthew after his Great-Grandpa Matt and Thomas after my Grandaddy... and my brother, and uncle, and cousin... the list of Toms in my family could go on for a while.) and I like that the airplane theme is just one more connection. For those who don't know, everyone in Aaron's family flies. I mean literally almost everyone! For starters Aaron's dad is a pilot for Alaska Airlines, and both his grandfathers are pilots along with his uncle and his mom. His other uncle flew ultra lights, another uncle is a Smoke Jumper, and his step mom and aunt were both flight attendants. See a pattern here? As you can see, the plane thing was pretty much a given. I decided to paint a mural on the wall because A: wall vinyls cost money and can't necessarily be customized B: I wanted to do something besides wall letters which is really popular right now, and C: it sounded more fun.

I drew up on the computer the concept of what I wanted:

It does say Burns on the bottom in white but it's hard to see, also as you can see at the time we were considering spelling Matthew with only one T. I ended up going with a different airplane as well, but this one was kind of cute and was my favorite until I came across the one in the final picture.
Once the concept was there, I fine tuned it and then Aaron's dad randomly enough had a projector and so I hooked that up and traced the final drawing up onto the wall.

Next I painted in the letters. I used a level and put blue painter's tape along the bottom of each name so that it would come out straight.

I did the plane last, and that one took a while! There were several small details, plus to save on money I had gotten a cheaper paint... I'm not sure what I was thinking there! I've used cheap paint before and it always ends up taking several more coats for it to look opaque! Which, of course, is what happened here. Next time I will use the best paint I can get! Standing on a step ladder for hours doing multiple coats of paint with tiny details while 8 months pregnant isn't exactly ideal.

Nearly finished!. I think it sat like this for a little while because I was too tired to finish it. There's nothing else in the picture for a size comparison, but this is a large mural! Here is the finished product:

I'd love to do another mural at some point, I had a lot of fun with this one. I especially love seeing Matthew get excited when he sees it! I won't be doing any more in Matthew's room, but hopefully one of these days I'll have a reason to do this all over again.