After my "California Love" art project turned out to look presentable, I got ambitious and decided to go bigger and create wall art for the guestroom. I purchased a 2-pack of 18 x 22" canvases for 40% off at Michaels, and a few more little bottles of acrylic paint in standard colors that I was missing. Thanks to my new addiction for Pinterest, I had been "pinning" lots of DIY wall art ideas. Originally I had thought I would attempt to recreate a piece of artwork from World Market, just like these bloggers did here. However, after showing that "pin" to my sister, she commented that "everyone who has Pinterest probably has that painting in their home." I realized she was probably right and it wouldn't be so "original" after all. So I kept looking...I knew I wanted something nature-related (leaves, flowers, branches, etc) to go with the bedding in the guestroom. I also was looking for something that wasn't too hard to do and did not require mad artistic skillz that I do not have.
After more searching on Pinterest and Google Image...and came across this DIY wall art in which the blogger use clipart, Contact paper, and paint. It looked somewhat easy, did not require artistic skillz, but was WAY too much work! I liked the design though, so of course, I "pinned" it! That got me thinking about cherry blossoms. As most people know, DC is known for the beautiful cherry blossoms at the Tidan Basin by the Presidential Memorials every Spring. The street that we live on also just so happens to have a lot of cherry blossom trees! In fact, this past April during cherry blossom season, we didn't even bother going down to DC to see the blossoms. All we had to do was take a walk around the neighborhood to see this:
More searching of "cherry blossom art" led me to this canvas art, this decal, and this for inspiration. With somewhat of an idea in my mind of what I wanted, two blank canvases, and paint/brushes, I rolled up my sleeves and crossed my toes (I needed my fingers for this project) that this would work! First, I used pencil to lightly draw out the design (sorry the picture is hard to see-):
Then using CraftSmart (Michael's store brand) paint in Brown, I painted a first coat of the branches of my cherry blossoms. Because I wanted more of a darker brown, I had to do multiple coats for the branches. The branches also got bigger and bigger as I went because sometimes I didn't exactly stay within the lines. 
I forgot to take other "in progress" pictures, but it took me a few hours of painting, waiting for paint to dry, recoating, and redesigning to come up with my final product. For the blossom themselves, I didn't have a dark pink paint color that I was lookin for, so I went back to my elementary school lessons to remember what colors when mixed together would give me the color I was looking for-- I pulled out the "True Red," "Peony Pink," and "Grape Juice" (purple), tested out the proper proportions, and got the dark pink I wanted! I was quite proud that I was able to create a color that I liked!
Here is the finished product! Dave was nice enough to take a break from his coding to help me mount it on the wall using "As Seen on TV" Hercules hooks that I got from Bed Bath and Beyond. It was easier than trying to find a stud to hammer into, but still required us to do a lot of measuring and leveling to make sure they hang straight and in the center of the bed.
For the (1 or maybe 2 if we're lucky) avid followers on this blog (I don't count my sisters to whom I send an email every time we post), you probably remember the guestroom blog post from March 2010. To refresh your memory, here's what it looked like when we first moved in:
Here's the guestroom after a coat of paint, new ceiling fan, and furniture, back in March 2010:
And here's the guestroom now:
Other than the living room (oops! I just realized we've only ever posted pictures of the bookcase in the living room and not anything else!), the guestroom is probably the room where I've done the most "decorating" if you can call it that. So there you have it. DIY wall wart that I did in a few hours. If I can do it, ANYONE can!
