Vinyl Decal Canvas Wall Art

The wall behind my couch was in desperate need of something. Big empty walls are never very attractive and just look too minimalist for my taste. So of course, I trolled Pinterest to find some inspiration.

Now, I don't know if it's because of Pinterest, or it just being my taste, but I have developed a slight obsession with flowy tree branches with birds. So when I saw this:

I just knew that that's what needed to be on my wall. Not only did I love that branch and the bird, I loved the different sized canvases and how they created an interesting dimension.

Now the problem? The person who made this used her own machine to make the decal she used. Now, I really have no need for that kind of machine, so at first I thought that I could, you know, try to free hand paint the image. Luckily, I nixed that idea fast, because as crafty as I can try to be, I most definitely am not an artist.

So then began the internet searching obsession. I was using Pinterest and Google, and checking sites such as Amazon and Target. The problem with the ones I found on those sites was that those decals weren't customizable. I wouldn't be able to change the size or the color, and to really make my vision come true, I needed to be able to do that because the ones I found were either too big or too colorful.

And then I turned to Etsy, which I really should have done in the first place. The problem I had with most of the ones I found on Etsy were that they were too....branchy. They were too winter branch like, meaning they had barely any leaves and looked too stark. I wanted something smooth  and lush looking. A lot of the ones I liked were also way overpriced in my opinion.

I finally did find one seller whose design I liked and she was willing to cut down the size to what I needed. So I ordered this branch with two birds in a white decal color, and then waited for it to arrive so I could begin putting this all together!

I bought my canvases from Michaels because it was the only place that had the size of canvas I was looking for. The two wider ones I bought were 16x20, and the longer ones were 12x24. I wish that I could have found some that were longer than 24 inches to give the whole thing a longer look, but you make do with what's out there!

Now, as far as the paint color goes, I was waffling for awhile. Green? Purple? Brown? Blue? I quickly nixed the blue because with a green chair, purple ottoman, and beige couch, adding another color in to the mix would be too much. The brown would have been fine since my tv stand and end tables are brown, but I decided that would be too drab in the end. I almost went with purple, but I decided that if I made it purple, I might grow tired of it a lot faster. So the winner was green! Which is no surprise since it is my favorite color. But the thing with the green is that it has more staying power and is a color that will stand the test of changing tastes.

When I went to AC Moore to pick out my paint, I initially got this medium dark green color. On the little example, it looks like it was a sage green, which was the color I was going for to meld with my furniture. However, after two coats on my canvases, I realized they lied about what the color looked like. It was too....green. It was too bright, it was just too much green and would not coordinate with my style at all. So back to the store I went and I ended up getting a more olive green color, which ended up being the exact shade I was looking for! So I repainted the canvases and I was very pleased with how the color turned out.

Putting the wall decal on was a bit more difficult than just peeling and sticking like you might think. The decal came in pieces, so I had to cut each out, lay them out in the correct placement, and then peel and stick each individual section on to the canvases. This was especially difficult since there wasn't a clean separation for where the canvases separated.

I laid each piece on the canvases, one by one, and smoothed out the air bubbles before pulling off the transfer paper. Whenever a piece overlapped canvases, since I kept the canvases flush to each other while transferring, after pulling off the transfer paper, I just took some scissors and sliced down the division. This ended up working really well! I thought it was going to be a disaster, but not at all.

After it was all transferred onto the canvases, I hung them up on the wall! And now the big reveal!!!!

I love it. There's something about that feeling of accomplishment once you finish a project like this. Even though it was a fairly simple idea and fairly simple to execute, I love the fact that I created it, that I made put it together, and even though it has a few imperfections, I love that it's unique to me!