Mermaid Door Hanger

by Tamara Bennett | Jul 29, 2022

Supply List:

DecoArt Americana Paint Colors:

I’m so excited to paint this mermaid door hanger with you today! First we’re going to lay down some colors on our background!

Paint the skin of the mermaid with a mixture of a few drops of White in the Warm Beige paint.
Add a few drops of the Laguna paint to the Sea Breeze paint and marble it together. Be sure you don’t mix it, you just want the paints to look swirled together on your palette.
Paint the tail of the mermaid with this marbled paint color you just created.
Paint the mermaid’s hair Royal Fuchsia, her shell bra Purple Pizazz, and the starfish using Primary Yellow.

Now our background colors are done, let’s start to add some highlights and shading!

It’s important to work while the paint is still wet so that the highlighting and shading turn out nicely. Here’s what you should do:

Get a tiny bit of white on the edge of your brush and shade it into the yellow edges of your starfish.
Use the color Carousal Pink to add highlights to the mermaid’s hair.
Draw the outlines of her eyes and paint them white.

We’ll add the rest of her eye details later. Isn’t our mermaid door hanger already coming to life?

Next up we’re going to get the tail of our mermaid painted. Don’t get nervous, we have stencils and the step-by-step of how to get it done.

Lay the fish scale stencil down on the mermaid tail. Then we’re going to dip a sponge pouncer in both Peacock Teal and Laguna and start to paint the scales on our mermaid tail.
Once that is dry, we’re going to give her a little sparkle! Start by adding some Glamour Dust Glitter Lime Green paint on tops of your scales with a sponge pouncer.
After the glitter paint is dry you’ll want to go back and add a little more of the lighter teal to the mermaid tail fish scale stencil.
Once the lighter teal paint has been applied, pull your stencil up carefully.

Ta-da, our beautiful mermaid door hanger is coming right along! Now we just need to add some details.

Use a round tip brush and the color, Bluegrass Green, to paint the pupils of our mermaid’s eyes.
Paint the insides of her pupil black using a round tip brush.
Outline the edges of her eyes and add eyelashes with black paint and a liner brush.
Add a drop of brown paint to our Warm Beige paint to create a darker skin tone color. We will use this color to paint on her nose.
Using black paint, we have to add a smile to the mermaid’s face. We want her to be happy and smiling!
Don’t forget those highlights and outlines, you know how much I love them. Using a round tip brush and white paint, add highlight lines and accents to your door hanger.
Following up with black paint, add outlines to make everything on your door hanger pop.

These final touches make all the difference!

I really hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial! If you have and you want to watch the video version of the tutorial it’s available in the free library on my website. The free library gives you access to free guided tutorials and templates as well as other freebies you will find beneficial as you’re painting door hangers. Be sure to check it out!

A 5-part video series that will teach you how to create your own door hangers, step-by-step. Perfect for beginners and newbies alike!