Bringing My Wall to Life

Bringing life to my wall. I wanted something really gentle and life-giving added to the room, but I wanted to stay within my Asian-Fusion theme. The thing I really like about this tree branch, is that to an outside eye... the tree looks like it is dying, black and bare. But, the truth is, it's the beginning of Spring the tree is budding with new life after a long winter. Each blossom is covered with gold leaf or metallic paint to symbolize TALIA. Talia is the Hebrew word for dew from heaven. Talia is a name that I feel like God gave me, If I ever have a daughter someday... that is what I will name her.

To begin, I am sure you would like to see the before photos of the blank canvas.
My Asian themed living room with hardwoods I refinished myself... Thank you very much :)

As you can see, this space needed a boost!

I started with the cherry blossoms. I went to Hobby Lobby to find a fake flower that resembled a cherry blossom. I found these simple white blossoms and plucked them from their branch.

Check out my new workspace! It isn't fancy... but its coming along!

I applied gold leaf with paint brush and a simple gold leaf adhesive spray from the craft store. I also spray painted a few blossoms with a silver metallic color for more TALIA.

Here are a few of the blossoms before I smoothed out the gold leaf with the back of my paint brush...
Next came the branch! This was Tracie's brilliant idea, because my friend Tracie is brilliant! She even picked the branch. She brought it from her back yard and we pulled off the leaves. It has a dark rich chocolate brown color that we just loved, because it was raining all day!
We hung the beautiful branch from some twine in my living room.
Then, we set up a light to cast a nice shadow on the wall for us to paint. Brilliant!

And Away we go with the painting. I really loved doing short wispy strokes. I felt like they looked more Asian. I don't really think that there was a wrong way to do this. Every stroke contained its own character. With every turn or shift of my wrist... it added character, even if it wasn't perfect.






Next came the blossoms! I hot glued each one to the wall... and there you go! My cherry blossom branch, covered with dew from heaven.