Wall Art Tattoo Tutorial

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Ok so this is the design for my bedroom wall I've been working on for the past week.

The whole thing is inspired by my favourite wallpaper from deviantart user "Gaukelwind", who apparently and sadly deactivated his account.

The wallpaper can still be found here: [link]

I just love pirates
Anyway, so I made a stencil out of this wallpaper and modified it quite a bit. The design is as follows:
- painting red stripes on the white wall
- adding a 4 layer, 3 colour sticker ("tattoo")

Credits for the boat go to Gaukelwind.
The font used is called Rapscallion and can easily be found on the internet.
I had to replace the original waves by a design that is easier to cut out.
I used this [link] by as reference. Hope you don't mind daegfire, thank you so much for sharing those nice waves

The digital design can be found here [link] and here are more pictures of the wall: [link]

The wall is almost finished.. Only thing missing is the letters... I'm not sure about the letters yet, and my hand is sore from holding scissors. I can't decide where and how exactly to put the words.... mhhh....

PS: sorry about the quality. I don't have a good camera.

I'm not sure anyones even interested in a tutorial, but I thought I'd write it down anyway.

So here is how I did it:

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Preparing and painting the wall

Material:
- your brain and/or a calculator
- ball of string or wool
- pencil
- ruler
- hammer and nails
- long straight(!!) edge of a ruler or cardboard to draw lines on wall
- tape
- a ladder probably
- red wall paint and maybe a tiny bit of white paint
- paint roller and/or brushes

paint, roller and tape cost ~30EUR

(0. cover the wall with the background colour, white paint, or leave it the way it is. See step 14.)

1. create a stencil design with separate layers [link]

2. decide on the format which obviously has to match the bedroom wall. I decided on 4 by 2 metres and 4700x2350 pixels. So this makes 1175px = 1m. This scale is important to get the proportions and formats right.

3. use a pencil to mark the corners of the frame on the wall (my wall is bigger than 2*4m). To get vertical lines vertical use a long string with something heavy attached to it, like a bundle of keys. Gravity's your best friend
I also marked the center of the 2m lines, i.e. at 1m distance, which is helpful for step 6.

4. mark the position of the center of the rays. Drive a small nail into the wall. To get the position right find out the distance in pixels from the left and bottom of the frame and calculate the corresponding sizes in cm. Simply divide the pixel numbers by 1175px and you get the sizes in metres.
Eg. 356px from left edge and 470px from bottom edge:
= 30cm left, 40cm bottom
(470px/1175px = 0.4m = 40cm)

5. the calculation stuff is most of the work it seems. Find out all the numbers where the rays touch the frame in pixel and metres and note them down (see pic A). Make sure you make no mistakes here

or I guess if you're not much of a perfectionist but more of a visual person, simply skip the calculation stuff and do whatever feels right to you. On a big scale like that its a little hard for me to get it to look right by visual judgement only, hence the calculations.

6. ok you calculated the positions where the rays cross the frame, now mark these spots on the wall using a ruler.

7. fun part: attach the end of a long string (e.g. ball of wool) to the nail (at centre of rays) and pull the other end to the floor of the room (beyond frame). Now move your hand such that one of the positions you marked in step 6 is crossed by the string. The string will be at an angle and you extend the string to the bottom of the floor, apply some tension such that the string is a straight line.

(I used a ball of string and never actually cut the string from the ball, this way you can use it over and over again)

now mark the position where the string ends and drive a nail into the wall at this point.

8. attach the other end of the string to the second nail. Make sure the string's a straight line and crosses one of the marks of step 6.

9. use a pencil to softly draw the straight line you created with the string onto the wall. I used the edge of a cardboard box for help.

10. repeat steps 7-9 for each mark you made in step 6. The idea is to extend the rays beyond the frame to cover the complete wall and indicate them with a pencil.
Dont forget to remove all the nails at the end

11. now that you've got the outlines of the rays on the wall, follow the lines with tape (the kind you use to cover up areas you don't want to get painted over). Cover up light switches and sockets too.

12. paint the rays with the red wall paint using a paint roller or brush. (Pic B) I left it to dry overnight, then painted it over a second time and let it dry overnight again. In the mean time you can prepare the wall sticker.

13. once the paint is dry you can remove the tape (C)

14. some of the edges got messy where I applied too much paint. I used a tiny brush to correct the edges with white paint (thanks to my neighbour ). If your wall has not been painted in years, applying fresh white paint to stained white is probably going to look awful.

Fotos D+E shows the wall after tape removal and before correcting the edges. If you look closely you can see some messy edges. F shows the wall with corrections and with the circle.

15. I added a tiny red circle on the centre of the rays. Not sure I should have done that, looked better without, altough the thinner the rays the messier they looked. Maybe I should have corrected them with a tiny brush instead... that idea occured to me when it was too late *omg*
If you want to do the circle: print one out or use a pair of compasses to draw on paper, cut out the circle, hold the A4-Paper onto the wall with one hand and paint the it in with the other.

Really it doesnt matter since this part will be covered up by the wall sticker anyway. But I thought if I mess up the sticker then at least I could remove it and still have a decently painted wall instead. So I wanted to make sure the wall looks good by itself, just in case

OK, done!!

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The wall tattoo

Material:

- wall tattoo sticker film (126cm width) in 3 colours: black (140cm), white (18cm), dark green (40cm)
I bought "Oracal 638 Wall Art Tattoo" on ebay.
Colour numbers 060 dark green, 010 white, and 070 black.
I couldnt get in-between sizes so I had to buy 1 metre of green and white, and 2metres of black (at 126cm width)

- application tape/film. I bought "ORAFOL Oratape MT 95 - 100m x 10cm" on ebay, which is way more than I needed but I couldnt get any less. Or lets say: less would have cost me the same.

- knife and scissors for cutting
- printer or plotter
- paper for the print obviously
- maybe cellotape if you use paper that is smaller than your design, the tape used for painting the wall is also useful
- some kind of background material to do the cutting on
- large floor area to work on
- sponge, like the kind used for doing the dishes

total costs of sticker and application film plus shipping ~45EUR

16. print out the layers of your design. Good for you if you have a huge plotter, I don't so I printed it on A4 paper. Print a test page with a part of your design where you can measure the size, i.e. the distance between two distinctive points. Measure the distance on the paper in cm and on your computer in pixel. The number of pixels divided by 1175px should be roughly the same as your paper measurement. If not, well, change the zoom of the print accordingly until your print matches the desired size.

Actually I calculated that A4 paper (21x29.7cm) is ~ 247x349px for the scale that I used. I digitally cut the design into overlapping sections of this size and printed these with "ignore print margins" and "zoom to fit page" printing options.

Yeah this part was annoying.

17. If using A4 paper, stick them together using cellotape. It came in handy that the design/print came out pixelated, they served for orientation. Especially straight lines are hard to match up correctly.

18. Attach the paper onto the sticker/film using the same tape you used for the wall. It comes off without damaging the surface of the sticker... not sure cellotape would work as well.

Note: coloured side faced upwards, sticking side down. Same with paper, printed side up. No flipping or inverting sides. You face it the way it will be on the wall later on.

19. Hard work part: do the cutting! This will take a while. Its actually best only to cut the coloured sticker film only, not the white film it is stuck on. Most of the time I didn't do this though. It's kind of difficult to apply enough pressure to fully cut the sticker, but not so much that the background layer is not cut too. To save extra work its easier to cut everything instead of having to re-cut the parts where the sticker wasn't fully cut.

20. Once done, you get something like shown in pic G. Make sure you remove all the coloured sections that will not go onto the wall.

21. (optional, I didnt do it) hold it in front of the wall where you would like to stick it. Mark the position (note that you will have to either cover the marks with the sticker, paint it over or carefully remove it with a pencil rubber or something later on. If mark is on the red paint it may come off and look ugly.)

22. Cover the sticker with the transparent application film (H), the whole thing will stick to the floor now.

23. Peel it off the floor and turn it around, with the transparent sticky side faced upwards.

24. carefully peel off the white protection of the sticker. Make sure you only touch the transparent sticker and that theres no dirt on the coloured sticker.

25. Hold the whole sticky thing with your fingers only touching the transparent sections and careflly place it into the wall where you would like it to be. Take a look at your original digital stencil design for reference. See pic I.

26. Use a sponge or your fingers to rub the sticker onto the wall. This is hard work and very important. Start from the inside out and leave no air bubbles. Make sure the edges are well attached to the wall.

27. Carefully peel off the transparent film at an 180° angle.

28. Use your fingers to softly rub the sticker onto the wall again, since peeling off the application layer may have pulled it off the wall a little. See pic J.

29. Done!! Repeat the steps for all the layers, pic K.

Note: there are helpful instructive videos on youtube that show howto apply a wall tattoo.