Decorating and painting your apartment can be fun and exciting as well as frustrating and time consuming. While some design ideas take less time than others to achieve, the 3D look can go both ways. It can be detailed and intricate or it can be basic and neat. Depending on your artistic level of both imagination and experience, decorating in 3D can take a lot of time and effort, or you can add a touch of 3D here and there to add a little extra to the room.
1 Design your apartment room by room to feature the designs you want in 3D as well as the colors you would like. This may take several pieces of paper. You can purchase pre-cut 3D appliques, or you can purchase the same foam material in large pieces and stencils to cut out on your own to custom make your own appliques.
2 Do all of the prep work before beginning. So as not to overwhelm yourself, you should work on each room in stages. For example, if you have a lot to do, you may choose to do one room at a time or add a coat of paint to one room and then a coat of paint to another room while the first room is drying. Move furniture at least 3 feet away from the walls and put painter's plastic on the floor next to the wall as well as covering some of the furniture as needed.
3 Paint the room with the base coat of paint. The base coat can be a simple white coat to lay the foundation for brighter colors. You may need more than one coat to cover up any paint that was on the walls previously.
4 Draw out the scenes or designs you want to turn into 3D. Paint anything that needs to be painted in before the appliques can be applied. For example, if you are painting a beach landscape with a lighthouse, you need to paint the sky, terrain and ocean before the appliques can be applied to create your lighthouse.
5 Cut out the appliques needed for your design. Going with the lighthouse theme, you need to cut a large white piece of foam for the lighthouse body, and then several other shapes for the stripes on the lighthouse as well as the light inside the lighthouse. Cut seagull appliques to put in your sky.
6 Glue or otherwise attach the appliques in place on the wall. The 3D look is achieved with at least a few foam appliques glued to the wall. Increase the effectiveness with a few layers of foam. After the appliques are set, you can emphasize them if you have an artistic ability with a few highlights using the paint. For example, paint in shining light rays going from the lighthouse light out onto the ocean.
