My Handpainted Mural as Wallpaper

Did you know that the mural I painted in our dining room is available as removable wallpaper? The fine ladies at Casart Wallpaper contacted me after they saw my work on the Houzz.com website. I did 3 custom panels featuring the flora and fauna that I see here at the farm. Available in 10 background colors, 4 of the autumn hued choices are on sale for 20% off this month. Check it out here. Below are the three different panels shown on a white background so that you can see all the design motifs. 

Here are 3 of the 4 colors that are now 20% off. 

The women at Casart are so helpful. Prices range from $218 to $347 per panel depending on the width and height of the panel and the weight of the paper. Samples are $9. The wallpaper is very easy to hang - check out my friend Lori's entryway here. It is removable and can be moved to your next home. I am pretty sure if you ordered quickly you could have the panels before Thanksgiving dinner.

Mouton en Paris? And More

Have you heard about the sheep the city of Paris has bought to mow some of their land? There is a good article in the NYTimes about it here. There is a video on the link too.

It has finally warmed up some here. It seems like the mud is almost over with too. YIPPEE! Yesterday, The Farmer rented a "no-till seeder". Do you know what that is? It is an attachment that you drag behind a tractor. It has a rows of discs on it that slice the earth. At the same time, seed is deposited into the slice. If you are lucky and the weather cooperates,  the seed will germinate and new grasses will grow. It is an easier way to plant a field of grass than plowing, harrowing and seeding. There is also practically no erosion of the soil - something that is worrying when plowing and seeding. This contraption makes it all happen in one pass. We have had a lot of success with this method in the past. It works nice in our sheep pastures - especially in areas where the sheep have trampled the grasses and weeds have moved in. Fingers crossed. (When you farm, there is a lot of finger crossing!)

There is a great giveaway happening now over on the Creativebug site. Sponsored by St. Martin's Press (the publisher of 50 Sunflowers) if you enter your email address, you will get access to a free 4 minute video lesson I did for Creativebug. And you get a chance to win a subscription to CB, my new book - 50 Sunflowers - and some of my Color By Kristin Yarn. Sweet! Check it out here.

My friends Lori and Chris purchased one of the wallpaper murals I did for Casart Wallcoverings. They shared photos of their small entryway before the mural. On the right is the front door which opens into the hallway.

Lori and Chris chose the Feast Panel in background color Morning Mist. They were lucky that the background color pretty much matched their current wall color. They told me the mural went up in no time and that it was very easy to mount on the wall and trim. They did say it was a two person job though. Lori told me that when guests come to their home now they just stand in the entryway and chat and look at the mural. That made me smile. Check out the different colors here on the Casart website.

 

Lots of things happening here in the background. I'm working hard. I'm hoping to be able to share one of them next week - that is if I can get it almost completed. More finger crossing.

Announcing Kristin Nicholas' Colorful Wallpaper Mural from Casart Coverings

Remember last fall when our farmhouse was featured with photos by Rikki Snyder on the Houzz website here? Did you read the brouhaha in the comments section? If you didn't, check it out here. That whole Houzz experience was a giant eye-opener for me. Are people really that afraid of color? Of using bright bold vivid gorgeous color in their living spaces? Do people decorate their homes thinking only of re-sale value? Do people live in fear of expressing their own taste and personality in their living spaces? Yes, many people are. 

Photo Rikki Snyder via Houzz

Thank goodness that some people aren't. I got an e-mail from a woman named Ashley. She loved my mural and she and her mom and sister own a wallpaper company called Casart Coverings. Would I be interested in painting a mural for them that would be sold on their website? "Be still my heart" I was saying to myself as I tried to speak with composure on the telephone. I was actually jumping up and down! I learned a little more about the project. About the product the mural would be printed on. About how I would be compensated. And then I ran with it 

Here it is - my mural - It is called the Garden of Family Farm Life. Available for the world to buy.....

Thanks to the new world of printing and technology, my technicolor wall mural - with over 15 colors in it, can be printed. Before digital technology, individual screens would have to be cut for each color, making wallpaper extremely expensive and unaffordable to most homeowners. The Garden of Family Farm Life Mural is made of 3 separate panels which I painted here in my studio. My paintings were turned into a digital file and delivered to Casart.

The Casart wallpaper is re-positionable and removable. No messy wallpaper paste! The back of the paper is coated with an adhesive similar to a post-it note. If you get tired of the mural, or you move, the wallpaper mural can be taken down and with you. Or it can be moved to a different room. You can watch a video of installing the Casart wallpaper here on their YouTube Channel.

The paper comes in 2 paper weights - "regular" and "lightweight". It also comes in two heights - 8 and 10 feet tall and two widths - 44 and 52" wide. The photo below shows the 3 panels on a plain white background.

You can purchase one, two or all three. You can use then as a panel in a room you want to bring a new design element to. You can cover an entire wall or room. Casart has chosen NINE other background shades as shown below. Check out this page on their website for a larger version.

Here's another cool thing made possible by the digital technology - if you don't like their choices, you can choose your very own background color and they can print the mural with your color. They will sample your color choice for you so that you can make sure you like it. 

A sample set is available for a small charge which is creditable towards your order. I received a set the other day and I have photographed the against the walls in our dining room below. Note that the scale of the design that is on the sample is much smaller than the actual mural. This was necessary so that you can get the feel of the painting and overall design. I painted the Casart mural so that when blown up, it will be to a similar scale as in our dining room.

A note about the two different weights. The "regular weight" has a slight pebbly texture to it. Ashley says it is extremely durable and easy to move to a new location. The "lightweight" has a smoother finish but is not quite as durable or easy to move and reposition. If you have questions, direct them to the folks at Casart. (Mention that you saw the write-up here on my blog.) Above are the samples that they will send you. They show the mural on all the different background colors. As you can see on the photo below, the Pumpkin Sunset colorway is the the closest to the color background I painted on our dining room walls.

 

I'll be happy to answer any questions. Either leave them in the comments or send them directly via email. The folks at Casart are extremely helpful. It's a new world and I am really happy to be learning about new opportunities and technologies to make the world a prettier place. Have a great weekend everyone!