Forest-Themed Nursery Painting - Step by Step

A few months ago I had a beautiful and yet daunting task ahead of me: to design our baby's nursery.
Pick a theme, pick colours, buy furniture and decoration. I loved the idea of a forest theme, so the colours I went with were green (foliage), brown (wood) and blue (sky). Instead of buying artwork for brightening up the walls I decided to make my own, personalised painting. Today I will show you how to recreate this and make it your own!

Supplies
- Canvas: The largest expense was a canvas of the approximate size I wanted the painting to be.
- Paint: I ended up using both watercolour and acrylic paint for different effects, but would recommend acrylic.
- Brushes: some fairly large ones are needed for the background, as well as fine ones for details.
- Cardboard: single-layered and preferably white.
- Hot glue gun.

1. Prime the Canvas
Using acrylic paint in various shades of green and blue, paint the background onto the canvas. Start with the blue center, mixing in lighter blue and white towards the middle for added depth. Make sure the colours are smoothly blended out. Then apply dark green foliage by short brush strokes. Add a lighter green towards the outside of the canvas to resemble tree foliage. Let it dry well.

2. Cut out and apply leaves
Sketch shapes of leaves in different sizes and from different angles onto the cardboard. Cut out and roughly sort by size. If you like, put the leaves down onto the canvas before glueing, adjusting where need. Then using the hot glue gun, apply the leaves to the edges of the canvas. Start with the larger ones and then add in smaller ones, generally pointing the tips away from each other. Use the glue to slightly lift the leaves off, creating a 3D effect. 

3. Paint the leaves
Paint the leaves light green, adding dark green shades as well as brown spots and darker veins once dry.

4. Add decorations - such as animals!
Again using the cardboard, sketch out various animals, such as butterflies, caterpillars, ladybirds, spiders, squirrels, bunnies etc! Cut out and paint, before applying to the canvas. Be sure to visually and physically balance the painting by evenly distributing the decorations. Glue them onto the canvas and leaves, again using the glue for a 3D effect.

5. Add the name*
Sketch out letters on the cardboard. Cut out and paint - for a wood-look paint the letters light-brown and then add the grain with a darker brown. 
* Name shown is an example only.