Vivarium Construction

[DippinChicken]

My boyfriend and I are very new to this but want to make the most natural looking terrarium we can. For the background I'd like to use that expanding foam with spaces for plants and handpaint it. Any tips on what sort of things I should use? Would acrylic paint be safe or would I need to coat it with something?
Any links to something extremely step by step would be very helpful! We have absolutely no clue about this sort of thing.

We just got an 18x18x24 ExoTerra setup at a garage sale for fifteen dollars. We have a male and female Red Eyed Tree Frog (at least we think ) and we wanted to make their new tank really rad. Any recommendations on the type of soil used? Right now were using plantation soil which seems to be pretty good.

Thank you so much!!

Here's a photo of Bilo (pronounced like Kilo).

We think this one is a boy. Today we got what we think is a female named Quizno. No picture of her yet

[SAVivEnthusiast]

Tagging along. And he looks awesome by the way!

[Mortonhalden]

It is really hard to make a vivarium and it needs lot of efforts and concentration as well. If you want natural look, then you have to think something out of the box. Plantation soil is nice idea to use for vivarium and frogs also like it.

[chacmhaal]

If you want to paint it you can use acrylic paint but you will need to cover it because time will remove it. Making a realistic background with paint is difficult for beginners, if I can give you my advice, you should choose to apply black aquarium sealant on background and cover it with natural dark substrat as i did on my own terrarium. A lot of people do that and it is a lot easier and safe for reptiles