Larger Than Life Nutcracker Paintings - A Tutorial

I am the chair of our Cup of Christmas Tea at our church this year.  This is my third year being chair. I have plans to retire after this, or at least take a sabbatical.  The grand event is tonight, but I thought I would start showing you what me & my committee have been working on these past few weeks.  You can find a short tutorial at the end of the post.

Larger than life Nutcrackers!

 

I'll let you know how we did it, should you ever want to do something similar for yourself.

Start with 1 inch thick insulation board  from the hardware store.  The size is 4' x 8'.  This is what the paper is taped to.  It is lightweight and not overly expensive and holds up quite well.

Next, get some paper rolls and cover your insulation board.  Tape down the paper on the back. 

Find some pictures that you want to use for your murals.  I looked for nutcracker coloring pages on-line and also just made some copies of some nutcracker pictures I had.  Copy those pictures to transparencies.

Put the transparencies on an overhead projector. (I wonder if these are getting harder to find....our church has them)  Project your image on the paper and trace. (we use Sharpies)

Paint your traced pictures.  We used tempera craft paints and acrylic paints.

Embellish as desired.  We did glitter, glitter glue, cording and some beads.  I realize its hard to see from far away.  I'll try to remember to get some close-up pictures to add.   We also added some snow flakes (Cricut cut) because the plain white was just too boring.

More pictures of our projects and the tea coming this week.