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Floral Hallway Mural Makeover

February 14, 2023 By Erica Deuel Leave a Comment

When your mind frees up and gets a little white space, you can see things in a new light. This is continually something I am amazed by as I go through the seasons of life. I showed you in my snow room remodel, how this idea looked after closing our art studio. As I come out of a heavy season of launching my online course, my mind is once again a little more free and I have been able to create a new floral hallway mural in our home.

The wall has had many different looks over the years.

We have used it to as our our own family’s Instagram reel as we add pictures to it over a year to highlight some of of our favorite memories made. Reagan has also painted an under water mural on it, and then we tried to add the pictures back on top, once we were tired of it. The pictures didn’t like sticking to her acrylic paint, so they kept falling off and we just never really did anything to change it.

I knew I needed a fun, creative project after I wrapped up my course launch and it hit me one day, as I was sitting on our living room couch staring down the hallway. That little spot needed fixing. I had to decide if I wanted to paint it solid to go back to holding pictures again or to create a new mural. You can see I choose to paint a new mural. I talk about the process and show more in these three YouTube videos. Check them out, if you want to see the action happen and how many times my dogs and kids walk past me as I painted :).

Video 1: The Start of a New Mural

Video 2: Mural Progress Update

Video 3: Mural Reveal

I’ll go into a few more details below, to walk you through my process, but in summary you can see the wall transformation quickly in this picture combo.

Step 1: Clean and prepare the wall

The first step was to take down all the pictures. It was fun to relive those moments, as I pulled each picture off the wall. I then sanded the wall quickly to erase any lumps of paint from Reagan’s mural.

Next, I wiped down the wall and gave it a coat of Kilz primer to neutralize an even surface once again.


Step 2: Begin to design

After I did all the prep work, it started to get fun.

I knew I wanted to paint some kind of floral design, but I didn’t want it as symmetrical and perfect as I did on this previous bedroom mural. One of my goals was to create a bigger scale and for the layout to not be even. I began by sketching the design out in pencil on the wall. Next time, I will sketch it on paper first, so there are not as many pencil marks. Those turned out to be tedious to cover in the yellow and lime paint.

Once the image was roughly on the wall, I was ready to cut it in with the base color. Since my base color was so dark, I didn’t want to paint the whole wall with it. I just kind of painted around my design, so I created a coloring page for me to fill in.

Step 3: Add the color and final details

This is where it begins to get really fun! I started doing one color at a time to get everything filled in. Once I did that in spacing out the colors, I started going over the colors with a second layer and then I wrapped it up with a few details on top of some of the design.

This incorporated new colors or mixing my current colors with other colors to make different shades.


When I was trying to decide about a color or if a shape was the right size, I would stand back and stare at it. At one point, Caleb, walked through talking to me and the moment was too cool not to capture.

It was actually hard to decide which shapes to give more details too. I could have kept going with details, but I didn’t want it to feel too precise. I wanted some whimsical aspect, so I just added enough details to make some of the blander shapes pop.

Enjoy your Creation!

Now that the wall is done and it looks so good, it’s hard to believe we left it at such a rough spot for so long.

That’s what happens with a full mind though. We get used to seeing things a certain way. Other aspects of life take over your attention and thoughts, and you just settle in.

It may be a matter of not having enough time to get to that project or you are just so use to seeing it that way, you forget there could be anything wrong with it.

Have you wanted to draw or paint on your walls?

I love the intentional care to this forgotten spot in our home. It now looks so happy and makes me smile every time I see it. I’m racking my brain on what other spot in our home could use a little attention. I  few ideas that come to mind are…

  • kids’ bathroom cabinets
  • kids’ bathroom walls/floor
  • pantry walls
  • master bathroom closet
  • kitchen accent wall
  • laundry hook wall

These areas could just use some organization or maybe a simple paint job. OR maybe I should paint some more murals. That really was so fun. Have you ever wanted to paint or draw on your walls. We grow up being told not to do so, but then we forget when we are grown and have our own house…that we get to make the rules. It’s like one of those habits or ways of thinking you just keep going with because it’s what you have always known. If you want to try something, I say…go ahead and do it.

Be a Crazy One

Your idea might seem crazy. You might fail at it. I certainly “messed” up as I painted this mural. There were even some big “oops” where paint got on a different wall and the carpet, but it’s nothing a little hot water and soap didn’t fix.

I learned and now I know what to be more careful with and to do differently next time. Anything worth wild or that comes to life first takes imagination. It can be crazy to see something differently, but maybe that leads to something beautiful.


Have you done something that filled your heart up recently? I know I need creative fixes after big projects or seasons that are stretching. Painting has always been a great brain break for me. If you need help figuring out your own brain break, I’d love to journey that with you in my Create More Connection Course. Enroll today and we can get started.

Now, what do you think? Are you ready to draw on your walls too? Maybe start by just looking around your home and deciding what is one area that you have gotten use to seeing in that way, and it could be so much more.

Have fun and imagine the possibilities!

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Margin is needed for Creativity to Grow

June 10, 2022 By Erica Deuel 2 Comments

Have you ever looked at something and seen it all of a sudden completely different?

I sit in my snow room (which is like a sun room, but in Indiana it has snow outside more than sun) daily. It’s my favorite room to drink morning coffee and wake up for the day. As things have slowly winded down with our Spoonful Studio and the days of it closing are nearing, I have found myself with more and more free time.

One day, I was sitting there and looking at the same mantel that I have every other morning but I asked myself, “when did that turn yellow?” I noticed the stain had yellowed and it now looked dirty and old. I realized that as my mind was being freed up from running a business- it all of a sudden had margin to process other things.

It was such a cool moment to mentally process the margin I was working hard to find-I was finding. If you listened to Matt and I share why we are closing our non-profit Spoonful Studio, you heard that wearing all the hats felt like I had 5 full time jobs. I was working nights and weekends, and I desperately needed to be freed up to be more present at home (physically and mentally) to my fast growing kids.

So, here I am now remembering how creativity is a muscle. It needs space and time to heal, play and grow just like any other muscle. Below are a few very real life pictures of the mess my snow room had become with the busyness of life and my over crowded brain…

I love to work on our house. It is part of how this blog began 14 years ago, by sharing my projects with all of you. Yet, as running an art studio took over my time, I have found I have not worked on or done a project on our house in a long, long time.

Side Rant: Our houses don’t have to have the latest trend or constant projects, but I do believe our houses should be a safe place. I want my house to breathe rest, peace, and love to my family and those who visit. We all know that messes, piles, un-attended decisions can lead to more stress or tension, which is in conflict to what we want our houses to represent. Part of finding margin in my days was to make our home more peaceful as well, which for me is attacking some of the projects.

What began as “I’m going to paint that mantel” led to…painting the walls, painting the trim, painting the doors, ripping up the carpet, staining the concrete, panting the handles on a chest of drawers, washing the curtains, and reorganizing some games we pull out regularly in this room. Here are a few pictures of my process.

This room isn’t very big, so I did half the room at a time. Whichever half was not getting worked on, kept all the furniture piled up.

What I found as I created was I was super rusty. I stepped in the can of paint and literally spilt almost an entire gallon.

I then went to shake the gallon of cement stain and the lid wasn’t on all the way. Stain went flying on my freshly painted trim and walls. I wasn’t even mad though. I felt alive.

As I have been finding more time available in my days, I have done yard work, read and felt rest filtering into my new routines. I was doing things I enjoy, but have not had time to do in a long time. Yet, I did not feel completely like myself. When you change what you have worked so hard to build and have a lot of identity wrapped up in it, I am sure it takes a lot of time to deconstruct and process all the feelings and experiences just lived. Getting messy with paint was one of the first moments I have felt so alive and like ‘Erica’ once again. I needed to create and dive into the process myself.

It didn’t matter that it got worse before it got better.

It didn’t matter that I was rusty and “messed up” a lot along the way.

I was creating, and my heart needed it.

This room reminded me that creating is a muscle and it needs practice and margin to grow. We can’t live extremely stressful and busy lives and expect to come up with our best ideas, most creative dreams, and to see everyday things differently. Just like athletes need to rest after a big game, our brains, souls and creative spirits need to recharge as well.

It took quitting my job to find margin to see this room in a new way and imagine how I could keep my favorite bohemian, colorful vibe but breath new life into it.

For laughs and because it makes me smile, I did leave a hidden footprint in the cement. It’s a reminder to make time to play with paint and not to take anything too serious.

What about you? Do you need to create margin in your life? You may not need to go as extreme as I did with changing up your career. You can form a new habit by switching out an old one.

Go for an evening walk after dinner.

Get off social media, if you can. I did, but that will be another post.

Make a no laptop or phone spot in your house so you unplug.

Sit on the patio, as the day turns into night, being with the people around you.

Tell a few close people what you’re going through. It matters.

We only have one life. I am encouraged how one of my favorite writers, Bob Goff, said “he choose the life he wanted and placed work around it- rather than choosing a job and trying to squeeze a life into it.”

I will always look fondly back on the times Spoonful Studio was open and the powerful work I got to do with it. Yet, I need more life. I want to enjoy my kids and have time to let creativity grow. Because we all know, I believe a Spoonful of Imagination leads to a more beautiful life.

To see more of my room remodel, Caleb created this quick video for me to share with all of you!

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How to Make Your Own Wallpaper

June 27, 2016 By Erica Deuel 8 Comments

Processed with VSCO with c1 preset

For the past 18 months, I have been working little by little to transform our house into our home. If you have been following along, you know that I tend to shy away from conventional styles, colors, and methods. I got to a place some years ago where I became pretty comfortable and confident in my style. Rather than caring much about what people thought, I started to design around things that inspired and spoke to me. I think this little nook is the perfect snapshot of my process. It shows all the crazy thoughts in my head and how it comes to life in my design.

I had images that were a constant source of inspiration in one hand and a nook connected to a high traffic area that needed some life in the other. In this post, I share how I combined the two and ended up creating my own wallpaper in the process. It was fun, easy, and something I know you could do in your own home!

It started with this little nook.

For a while, I had samples of wrapping paper taped to sections of the nook. I pondered how I could bring the design of the paper to life on the walls. Ultimately, this lead me to taking that inspiration to another bedroom where I painted a floral wall inspired by the wrapping paper. Since I put that look somewhere else in our house, it left me once again trying to decide what to do with this nook. I wanted to accent it in some way. I tried several paint samples, but none of them looked right.

laundry nook beforeOne day I was drinking a tea and started flipping through a book I flip through often for inspiration. It sits on a side table to be a quick read. As I was thumbing through it for the 100th time, I had the thought, “I wish I could see all the pages at once. They are so beautiful.” Almost as quick as the thought came, it was followed by thinking of my accent wall I had been trying to figure out. Could these book pages be collaged in a way to make wallpaper?

how_to_be_a_wildflower_bookI really didn’t give it any time or research before knowing I wanted to try my idea. I started ripping my beloved book up page by page. Once I had ripped out all the pages, I had a huge stack of beautiful paper. I used scissors and cut off all the frayed edges. I was then ready to figure out the wallpaper method.

how_to_be_a_wildflower

wildflower_book_pages

wallpapering_materialI taped a few pages up in different directions to figure out if I wanted a messy scattered look or if I wanted it to look more like organized rows. I decided I liked the messy look. I went to Lowes and asked where the wall paper paste was located. To my surprise, there was a roller of wallpaper paste made for doing wallpaper boarders. It was the perfect size for my project! It was a small bottle with a roller to easily apply the paste to my book pages.

I gathered a few other supplies. The most important was the wallpaper smoothing tool. It’s similar to a putty knife or a joint knife used in drywall work. It’s critical to flatten your paper and push out the air bubble. You will also need something to cut your pages as you work around light switches or to reach the borders of your wall. You might want to try an x-acto knife or box cutter to trim the pages. I found it easiest to hold my piece of paper in place, draw a line where it might need to be trimmed against the door trim/ceiling/wall corner/etc, to use scissors to cut the paper, and then start the applying method.

DIY_wallpaperMost of the pieces didn’t need to be trimmed. I simply picked a page and decided which side of it I liked best, and rolled my wallpaper paste onto the side that would be up against the wall. I rotated the piece of paper different little angles so it didn’t look perfect and pressed it onto the wall. I then used the smoothing tool and pressed all the wrinkles and air bubbles out.

wallpapering1

wallpapering2

wallpapering3

wallpapering5A few little things I thought through as I worked…

  • The book printed its images on both sides of the pages. Sometimes it was really hard to decide which side to display and which side to glue to the wall. Fortunately, one book was not enough to cover my wall. I ordered a second book and got to use some of the sides that I didn’t get to use before.
  • I tried to space colors out on the wall, I didn’t want a bunch of blueish pages, for instance, to all end up together. Spreading them all apart gave a more balanced look.
  • I placed some of my favorite quotes in more prominent eye level spaces. Smaller text and images I placed more towards the ceiling or floor.
  • I tried to place a full-page pictures in the midst of some quotes, so it didn’t end up that all the pictures were bunched up together and all the quote pages bunched up together.
  • I stood back often to take a look at the wall to see what needed to happen next. This helped place smaller print scaled pages throughout the wall to help other pages pop out more.
  • I was careful in my placement to make sure that the coverage was solid and none of the wall was left poking out through any small cracks or gaps.

wallpapering6It was really messy. I used a huge old sign and placed it on the floor as my mobile work space, and it had gluey wallpaper paste all over it. I probably could have sorted my pages out to have a stack of images vs. a stack of quotes, etc, but I didn’t. The creative in me decided to just go for it. Some of you organized folks will probably have a much more calculated way to go about it, which is great!

For me, I viewed it as a puzzle and kept filling it in until it was all filled up to the sides and from the ceiling to the floor. After I had a solid collage, I rolled my wallpaper paste over the whole wall as a layer of protection from dirty fingers and hairy dogs.

wallpapering_is_messyI love how it all came together! It’s so colorful and fun! The book, How to be a Wildflower by Katie Daisy, costs $11.46 on Amazon. I ended up buying two books from there. What an inexpensive way to buy wallpaper we love, to brighten up a small space!

small_wall_wallpapered2This door leads into our garage. It is the most used door in our house. We can see this little nook from our kitchen, which is part of why I wanted to brighten up the space! It is also our walk through laundry room into my craft room. This small nook is one high traffic space!

colorful_kitchenI love how these beautiful pages are perfect for inspiration and deep conversations. The other day I was sitting at the table with my kids, and I asked them what they thought one of the pages meant when it said, “gather unlikely friendships.” It has led into some of the most real, challenging, and beautiful conversations.

Now, as I stand here and fold clothes, I can turn around and see so much beauty. If you don’t follow Katie Daisy on Instagram, you should. She is so talented and lives with her husband and sweet boy near Bend, Oregon. She originally painted each one of these images and then scanned them to create the book. Her feed is full of gorgeousness from her work and nature.

laundryroom

floral_wallpaper

Processed with VSCO with c1 presetThis little nook is a well used space in our home, and now as we come and go and just live…we can be inspired. It’s a small wall with a huge punch.

a_boy_and_his_dog1

colorful_kitchen_decor

Matt and I joke that the more we do to this house, the more that we make it “ours”, the more we might have a hard time reselling it someday. This house is full of color and personality…just like us! We love it!

If you are interested in some of the other projects featured in these pictures, you can find more info in these posts…

Teal Kitchen Table

Sunburst Mirrors

Pink Lockers

Thank you so much for checking out my homemade wallpaper post. I hope you have a great week and get to create something beauitful!

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Welcome to Indiana! (our new house tour)

January 3, 2015 By Erica Deuel 2 Comments

Do you hear Taylor Swift singing “Welcome to New York, it’s been waiting for you” as you read my title? Just image me shouting loudly “Indiana” over her as she sings New York. My poor family has had to put up with that for two months now.

To catch you up quickly, we packed up our trucks a little less than two months ago and moved north.

It’s been a packed two months! We started off by putting all our stuff in storage and living with a sweet family for a little over a month.  We found and closed on our new house after months of searching. We pulled our stuff out of storage, moved in and had a week in the house till we left and traveled back home to Georgia for Christmas with our families.

It’s been a wild ride, but one that we have loved. We have now officially been in our house for another week. It’s been so exciting. I constantly walk from room to room and think how much I love this house. The previous owners renovated it so beautifully. We are enjoying unpacking our stuff and setting this house up to be our home. As we find places and learn about the house, I continually think how it feels like the sweet previous owners were preparing this house for us. It is just perfect.

We bought a ranch, so we went back to our roots in some ways. We started our lives together in a little old ranch and now we are back in one. I love it. It’s crazy to me that this our third home to share with you. Our first home we lived in for our first 8.5 years of marriage, our second home we lived in for 18 months, and now we are here. Life is an adventure, and I am excited to show you some of our latest one…

backyardThere’s a few features that quickly had me fall in love with the house. One of them is the huge, flat backyard with a woods and a creek. I know there will be lots of sports played on that grass and I can’t wait for the kids to go trumping through that creek this spring. We want to build a bridge over the creek to the woods too. Our last house did not have a good backyard, and we really didn’t want to make that mistake again.

When you walk in the front door you are immediately in the living room. I love the fireplace. It was also a must on my list with the long winters here. To the right is a guest room that will also double as our foster care bedroom. Yes, we are getting re-certified!

living_room

guest_roomIf you turned left in the living room, you would go down a hall way to a bathroom and two bedrooms. Reagan will get one bedroom and the boys will share the other.

bathroom2Reagan’s bedroom came with an electric fireplace. She is thrilled :).

Reagan's_room

Reagan's_room1The boys bedroom was the previous owners’ office, so there are lots of lights and closet space!

boys_room2

boys_roomSince we don’t have a basement, a lot of storage stuff will be in our guest room closet. At our last house we stored a lot of the school, games stuff in that closet. I’m so excited that the boys have two closets and one can be dedicated to holding lots of those bigger toys and games now.

If you go back to the living room and walk around the fireplace, you are in the three seasons room. It’s my favorite room in the house, and definitely one of the reasons we bought this house!

sun_room2

sun_roomAll those windows are a dream! When we wake, we all find our way to this room. Matt and I drink our coffee in here and the kids play beside the fire. It’s amazing!

We also fell in love with the kitchen. It’s dark beautiful wood and the open floor plan has us dreaming of lots of fun gatherings in here.

kitchen

kitchen_renovatedThe master bedroom is off the kitchen. It has a little walk through with a desk and closets till you get in it. Matt and I have our own closets. We “temporarily” set up our tv in that little nook, so we have been watching movies as a family on our bed. We might have to get another tv for the living room, but I also like the cuddles so maybe we wont :).

master_bedroom

bathroom1If you walked through the kitchen, you go into the laundry room that also leads into the garage.

laundry_room Also, tucked back there is my new craft room!

craft-ROOM2

craft-ROOMThere’s huge windows and our pups can even fit through that doggie door. I wish I had made a video of us teaching the dogs to go in and out it. That was pretty funny!

Well, that’s our house. We feel so incredibly blessed. It truly feels like our heavenly father went before us and planned this house for us. We were so upset when we didn’t find a house right away or even a house we wanted was already under contract, but now we know we were just waiting for this house to be ready.  Thank you so much for your prayers and well wishes as we have been on this journey. We have truly felt them!

There are some cosmetic things we are changing and ways we are adding color and our touch on the place. I can’t wait to show you what we do! We have started painting the boys room and my craft room, and it’s so exciting to see my ideas come to reality.

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