Disney Paint

Did you know that Disney has a line of paints for your home especially made to coordinate with their licensed products such as bedding and wall art? Well they do, and as of March you can purchase the Disney Ultra Durable paint in Walmart nation wide.  As one of the Walmart Moms I was given the opportunity to try out some of the paints.

Now, not only do these paints come in lots of great fun colors suitable for babies, children and teens. . . but they also have some really incredible specialty finishes.   All that Glitters (an all over sparkly glitter topcoat), Speck-tacular (an iridescent confetti topcoat), Ready Set Glow (glow in the dark glaze), Great Slate (tintable chalkboard paint) and Magnificent Metallic (24 metallic sheen paints).

I was given the chance to pick 3 paints and one specialty finish to use on a project.  I didn’t have anything I wanted to paint at the house–the kids rooms are the colors I want them, and so is everything else except a single back stairway.  So instead I asked if it would be ok to paint my church nursery.  (note: that’s basically the daycare room for kids too young to attend the full church service).  Both Walmart and my Church agreed!

As you can see, the nursery was a bit worn to start with.  All those little kids hands over time hand left their mark on the walls. . . it was just looking tired.  There was a mural on one wall–I believe one of the youth groups years ago had done it.  The style was distinctly southwestern/Native American and seemed out of place for upstate New York.  Plus it had never been completed-the bottom of it was just penciled in shapes that had never been painted.

I chose the colors You Betcha Blue, Mood Ring (a purple) and Mike’s Mayhem (a green).  I also chose the Speck-tacular specialty finish, which is a clear glaze with a large flake iridescent glitter in it.   Walmart sent me a gallon of each, along with a really nice box of painting supplies:

Now it was time to actually paint!  My idea was to paint huge random shapes all over the walls leaving white in between them.  Yankee Bill suggested that we start with a cross on the wall that originally held the mural–sort of as a homage.  I built out from there with angular shapes using a double width of the masking tape–the tape would eventually be peeled away to form a sort of white frame around each shape.  After completing one wall I realized if I did that all the way around the room it would look crazy busy.  I didn’t think the folks who wound up volunteering in the nursery would be happy if I created an environment that agitated the kids!

My brother (pictured below) had stopped by to see the progress and suggested that we just do big tumbling shapes on the opposite wall–with lots and lots of white space in between.  I handed him the tape and let him go at it!  We used a small smear of each color to mark the shapes–that way we could figure out a nice dispersment of color.  It also made painting easier–I could just paint all the blue, then all the green etc.  We painted the cross with Speck-tacular on top of the blue to make it extra special.   For the remaining two walls I opted to just painted the Speck-tacular over the white.  That gave a bit of fun and interest but was calm enough to give your eyes a chance to rest.

A bit more on the Speck-tacular.  It’s easy to use, but you can’t just slap it on like regular paint or you will get clumps of sparkles and then nothing.  You need to reload the brush or roller frequently and just do small segments at a time.  There is a video embedded at the end of this post that shows you how 🙂

When we finally peeled off the tape I was so thrilled with the results–it came out even better then I had imagined it would!  (note: some of the paint is still damp in these pictures, which is why there appears to be variation in the paint.  It all dried to an even tone)

Oh, and see that blue shape in the collage above, right near the door.  For those of you who are fans of Doctor Who it is indeed what you think it is!  My priest (Father Dave) loved how the nursery came out but as another fan he said “Do you think there is any way we can work in a stylized Tardis?”.  I was happy to comply.  I just love the geek kismet 🙂

When I was “done” with the project I realized that I wasn’t actually done.  The weather has been humid here in Upstate NY (as it often is in the spring) and I had sort of rushed the layers of primer and basecoat, so I didn’t want to burnish down the painters tape too hard.  Well, a bit of the paint leaked under some of the tape.  After I had spent all that time and effort, I didn’t want the drips and feathering at the edges of my shapes to make the whole thing look amateurish.  So I bit the bullet, pulled out a small craft paintbrush and went at it with some white paint.  It was finicky work, and it took about an hour to go around the whole room, but I figured after all the time I had spent I needed to take the extra time and make it look as good as I could:

So what do you think?  I just love how this project came out.  It’s one of those things where I finish and say to myself  “Dang! I can’t believe I was the one who did that!”.  The colors are bright and fun yet gender neutral.  The design came out playful without being overwhelming.  The Disney Ultra Durable paint means that the walls can be scrubbed of all the kid related grime that I am sure will accumulate over time.

I love it and the church loves it.  Thank you Walmart and Disney Paint!

****This is a sponsored post****

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.