On a rare occasion, my mother and craft partner in crime, comes to ME with an idea for a project.  This time she wanted my help with transforming my nephew's room into a cool sports room for his birthday as a surprise gift.  Who can resist a little HGTV transformation inspiration? 

I immediately began searching Pinterest for ideas that might turn his room into a cool place for a middle school boy that would continue to grow with him.  I came upon an amazing picture of a basketball wall. Mom and I used that as our jumping off point.  We planned to buy new bedding, hang & frame sports pictures/posters that my nephew had stashed in his closet, hang shelves above his bed, move his door basketball goal to a place on the wall, and paint this giant basketball mural (my big part in the plan). Sounds easy, right?

We painted three walls with a taupe shade and the feature wall in orange. (See specific colors listed below.)

We painted a test board to practice our dotting technique.  I highly recommend you practice!

We used car wax applicator pads because they were already round and easy to use!

You need to saturate the applicator pad with the paint and then press down and pull off.  It is totally okay if you don't have a perfect circle.  Once they are all up you won't even notice the imperfect ones!

Once the test board had the look we wanted, I set to work replicating that on the wall.  I started in the corner and tried NOT to dot in a particular pattern.  At first I thought it looked terrible but once you add the black basketball lines, the dots blend into the background. TIP:  It helped to have one person loading paint onto an applicator pad while the other created the dots.  We always had two pads going and then when the pads were soaked, we just pulled out two new ones.

I used Frog Tape to tape off the lines. I really just eyeballed it! It took a long time to get the curves right and my brother (who was supervising his son's room transformation) helped me. He stood back and offered assistance because when you are up close to the design it can be hard to lay it out correctly.  We did have a basketball on hand to help!

To keep the black paint from bleeding through the lines, we watered down the background orange paint and "sealed" all the interior paint pieces.  This helped tremendously!!!!

I was able to roll the glossy black paint on with a small foam roller and only had to use a brush in a few spots.

It already looked so much better and the tape wasn't even off yet!  It took two coats to cover really well.  I could barely contain myself waiting for the paint to dry before we removed the tape.

Here it is!  The basketball wall complete with cool plaid bedding for a growing boy.

The metal brackets and shelves helped to give it a locker room feel.  We added sports memorabilia and trophies that my nephew already had in his room (or closet).  He was very surprised and LOVED it!

Paint Colors:  Tempered All Spice (Taupe) from Lowe's - 1 gallon
                       Buf Top Tour (Base coat Orange) from Lowe's- 1 gallon
                       Orchestra (Orange Dots) from Lowe's- 1quart
                       Gloss Black from Lowe's- 1 quart

Bedding:  Michael Jordan Collection from Bed, Bath & Beyond

Shelving: Silver Brackets and Pre-cut Shelving in Country Oak from Menard's

Metal Letters:  Hobby Lobby