The Luckyleo Workshop Mural
Luckyleo’s Floral Mural
Are we crazy? Kinda. 😉 But when we heard that the move-in date for our cusom built-out Luckyleo Headquarters was coming up, Heather and I immediately started brainstorming what we would do as an accent wall for our workshop, instead of packing up the workshop. It’s so fun to make such an industrial space come to life with special touches that make us and our team feel cozy, at home, and happy, and a creative environment is so important to us all. It was up there as top priority from the start to make our new space really welcoming and fun. We teamed up with our awesome friend Ryan from Valentich Goods for the bottom portion of the accent wall. He gave new life to an old fence’s wood that was going to be thrown out and reclaimed it to create something beautiful for us. He even went to the trouble to create small accent shelves, which we love since we can scatter little plants around the wall and give it an even more lively, organic feel to our workspace. Doesn’t a natural element always provide that feeling of peace and synergy? We love what he did with it!
However, our wall is so tall, since our new space has beautiful vaulted ceilings. Ryan’s stash of reclaimed wood wasn’t quite enough to go all the way up, so we had another thought for the top half. Heather and I had never tackled a for-real mural before, but we figured…why not now? So, amidst the bustle of organizing the workshop and team for a big move again, we carved out time to assemble a few photographs of flowers we were really drawn to for the template we would use on the mural!
I then took my good friend Robert Spooner's advice (gotta love you, Spooner) who is an inspirational painter we used to be neighbors with. He gave me the tip to use guides on a Photoshop image so I could use specific inches as mile markers and sketch the large-scale version more accurately. That helped save me so much time, since when you’re up close on a mural your perspective can get pretty skewed and confused!
After I had created a pencil outline of the floral mural, Heather and I selected the color range of paint we would use for the flowers. We happened to luck out with a huge range of options at our local Home Depot from small sample colors other customers had left behind, so we got all our colors at a discount for around $2 or $3 per small can. Amazing deal! I had originally thought I would use a mixture of home paint and acrylic paint for the details, but I ended up using all home paint as my medium since there were so many colors available in their bargain section. We decided on a black background for the whole mural so that the pink flowers would really pop. (Also, in case I totally screwed up, we could paint over the whole thing, haha).
I had a few moments of extreme vertigo, at the very top rung of the ladder, trying to paint into the corners, but Heather helped out with filling up the top as I got too tired to hold myself up! Also, my husband, Ryland Early, came by and was a huge help to get the very top filled in with black (since he has a couple of inches height advantage).
In the end, we are super pleased with how this turned out! We imagined it as a giant flower pot, with the wood wall as the base and the painted flowers peeping out above, reaching towards the sky. I think it brings an artistic element to the space that is inspiring to us all during our workdays. We like to keep our perspective artistic and free-spirited, and the flowers are a nice reminder of that. Have you ever tried out a mural? If not, I say just go for it! It seems a little intimidating at first to try a new project, but I’ve always been happier with the ones that stretch me to learn something new. Leave a note in the comment box to tell us what you think of our new mural and reclaimed wood wall transformation at our Luckyleo Headquarters!
❤ Chelsea Early