train murals

If you’ve been following my blog, we’re staying on track with Train Murals.  I spent six and a half weeks painting every hallway and every classroom in the Kid’s Ministry area of my church to give children the feeling they were going on a journey aboard The Grace Express.   It was a lot of fun, but also A LOT of ground to cover.  So now, in Part 4, I’ll show you where to Find Inspiration for a project this size. 

Inspiration from books

First off, I know nothing about trains, so I was thrilled when someone lent me a stack of railway history books that had awesome photos.  It was from there that I got the idea to paint water towers and telephone poles in addition to the trains. (I never really noticed before that they were always along railroad tracks.)

train murals

Inspiration from etsy

I also went online and searched through Free Clip Art and other train artwork.  There were so many images, the trick was knowing my artistic skill level and limits.  I went with simple designs from the internet that I knew I could not only pull off, but that I could embellish a bit and make them more my style.  Here are some examples, beginning with this cool, all black decal I found on etsy.com:

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This inspiration from www.etsy.com

  Here’s my hand painted version:

train murals

Inspiration from online clip art

I fell in love with this next cartoon train from pixgood.com because of it’s simplicity, and knew it would be perfect for the baby nursery:

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This image is from www.pixgood.com

I didn’t change it too much because it doesn’t get any cuter than this.  I just added an extra car and some text.  Here’s my painted version:

train murals

train murals

train murals

train murals

I found this adorable little engineer on clipartbest.com.  But you’ll notice he has sticks for arms.  I added full arms, made his coveralls striped, and gave him a more poofy engineer’s cap. 

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I Loved this Inspiration from www.clipartbest.com

 Here’s my hand painted version:

train murals

I downloaded dozens of images onto my phone, so that I could be inspired by them every time I was faced with a blank wall.  Before I knew it, all the walls were filled.

train murals

train murals

 train muralstrain murals

The only thing missing now…. railroad tracks.  Yes, I went there!  See how I painted tracks on concrete floors in my final blog entry of Train Murals.  I’ve saved the best for last!

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