It took me a long time to order a new large flower mural for my studio, but I finally ordered it last Thursday and it arrived on Saturday. I couldn’t believe how fast it was!
The wallpaper pattern was made by me (shown how to do it here) and it was on my studio wall from June 2019 until just a few weeks ago.
As I explained in my previous post, I loved the design, but thought some of the colors needed some tweaking (especially the dark purple flowers that looked like mere clumps from a distance) . And I wanted to print the design larger. .
It took me several weeks to find the right company to print my new large floral design. Since the entire design is not a standard wallpaper that fits on one width of the wallpaper, it had to be printed as a mural. It’s not difficult to find a company that prints custom murals from your own photos. There are a lot of them. However, I would need to find a company that would take a seamless, repeatable design, resize it, tile the design, and print it to cover a very specific space (like my 16 foot wide space). I have. ) is a little more difficult.
I originally started working for Photowall (the company I bought the mural for in the bathroom from), but I had problems with their design system, so I decided to look for another company. So I started working with Murals Your Way, but the person didn’t seem to really understand what I wanted, and I lost confidence.
Then about four weeks ago, suddenly and just in time, I received a marketing text from Spoonflower (where I got my original floral wallpaper printed) with some helpful links. One of them happened to be:almost How to turn your photos into murals with Spoonflower. So I took advantage of their tutorial (I didn’t actually do it exactly as they suggested, but their instructions were a great starting point for figuring out what I needed to do) and started using the new I doubled the width of the design from his original design.
I was very nervous to order that mural. I went back and forth through the design process to make sure everything was done right, but last week I finally got the courage to click the ‘order now’ button. When it arrived on Saturday, I was nervous and more than excited to unpack her two rolls and see if I had done it right. Well, sure enough, I did it right, and the pattern matched perfectly!
After going through this whole process, my design ended up being one pattern that was repeated and pasted onto one 24 inch wide piece of wallpaper (this is my original design from 2019).
…with a new 2023 design that includes one whole pattern repeat that spans the width of two 24 inch wide wallpaper pieces.
Now, what catches your eye are the extra pieces on each side of each individual wallpaper. On the left side of each piece is this little 1/4 inch white strip.
And on the right side of each piece is a 3/4 inch printed area and another white strip.
Because Spoonflower’s system isn’t actually set up to print murals, and when installed, the wallpaper design is printed with a slight overlap (this is a feature I really like about Spoonflower wallpaper). , these are minor quirks. When trying to print a mural using a wallpaper printing system, you have to be creative.
Therefore, both sides of each piece must be trimmed before installing this mural. You’ll need to cut off a small white strip on the left side, and cut off the extra 3/4 inch pattern of him printed on the right side along with the extra white strip.
Cut these out (imagine the thin white strip on the far left of the right part in the photo below) and the pattern will fit seamlessly.
I am really happy with this result. It actually exceeded my expectations and I can’t wait to put it on the wall! The dark purple flowers are bright enough and big enough that they look like flowers from across the room I like how it looks (rather than purple blobs).
And this second time was cheaper than the first because we changed the overall design of the long wall and decided to put the lower cabinets all over the wall. Previously I ordered enough wallpaper to cover the walls from ceiling to floor, but this time I only had to order enough wallpaper from ceiling to countertop.
I took some pictures of the new mural and the rest of the old wallpaper for comparison. You can see how big and bright the new mural is.
But this is a pretty decent comparison of the two, with the new mural on the left and the original wallpaper on the right. Pretty great, isn’t it? 😀
I didn’t do the tutorial on how to convert the pattern into a large mural for printing with Spoonflower. I didn’t want to go into too much detail if no one was interested in that detail. But if anyone wants to know how to print a mural with Spoonflower, or how to get around a system that’s only set up for standard wallpaper with overlapping seams, I’d be happy to share my process. think.
Like I said, I started with their tutorials, and to be honest some of their tutorials didn’t make sense to me. And in the end I wanted to create overlapping pieces, like standard wallpaper. (I really love that feature!) but their mural tutorial creates parts that need to be trimmed (it’s never possible to do it perfectly by hand) and they end up next to each other during installation.And it is shown going back to the butt joint between the imperfect cuts (this is what you intention you have because you are not a machine) and fill them in with a marker or paint.
I mean, it literally hurts me physically when I see it. You all know me so well that I know it’s going to be hard. no from me. You don’t want the seams between the pieces to be imperfect and needn’t be painted or colored with markers.
So, I went through their I made some adjustments to their instructions as I used the tutorial. The end result is a design that leaves overlapping seams (no butt seams are needed between the imperfectly cut pieces), creating a seamless, perfect pattern with no apparent seams and imperfectly cuts. No coloring or painting is required between the welded butts.
If there are at least a few people who would like me to do a tutorial on this, I would be happy to do so. But if no one is interested in doing it themselves and just wants to see my murals on the walls of my studio, that’s what happens. I hired two of hers to raise all of my desktop height outlets by about 3-4 inches. (The current height was fine with previous cabinet and desktop plans, but it’s too low for IKEA cabinet plans.) They’ll be here tomorrow morning to start work. . Once completed, you will be able to place your new mural. I hope to have it finished by Friday.
In Addicted 2 Decorating, I share my DIY and decorating journey of modifying and decorating a 1948 Fixer upper that my husband Matt and I purchased in 2013. Matt does most of her work because she has MS and she cannot do physical labor. I do my own housework. You can learn more about me here.
