lavender's blue: DIY Phoenix Suns Logo

This weekend, I did a fun painting project for my little brother's new Phoenix Suns-themed room. The room was already painted purple, so that made my job much easier. Here's a quick how-to for all you sports fans out there (or you could easily use the same method for any large image on your wall).

Supplies:
Large black and white poster print (36" x 48" printed at Staples for $4.99)
Interior house paint (Behr Premium Plus Ultra sample for $2.49, colors used were Distant Thunder, Amber Glow and Sweet Mandarin)
Small paintbrushes
Painter's tape
Scissors

I started out by finding a large image of the logo and then importing that into Photoshop. I used the paint bucket tool to paint areas black and white for easier printing and legibility. I sized it to 36" x 48" and had it printed out on large format paper at Staples for $4.99.

After that, I cut out the entire outline, taped it to the wall with painter's tape, and traced it with a pencil. Make sure you measure your wall to determine the center and make sure it's straight too!

Next, I cut out the inner pieces and traced each one in its proper place.

I did this for each piece until every portion of the logo was traced onto the wall.

You can sort of see the completed logo here that was traced out.

Next, the fun part begins - painting! This reminded me of those old paint-by-number projects I used to do. For the paint, I bought small sample-sized paint jars from Home Depot for $2.94 each. I ended up having tons left over. Maybe next time, $.99 craft paints might even work? It's not a huge price difference though, so it might be worth it to get the regular paint since it's better quality.

Also, be sure to start from top to bottom, left to right (or right to left if left-handed). This will help minimize smudging and smearing.

The yellow part took me a while longer because I had to do several coats to get rid of the purple underneath. I used Behr's Premium Plus Ultra that was supposed to be paint and primer in one, but it still required several coats.

As you can see, I started in the afternoon when there was still sunlight and by this time, it was late evening when all my natural sunlight was gone....