Ceiling Display

This week I've been working on minor little projects.  I wired 2 roomboxes for a customer.  I created a ceiling for a store display.  And I added a few more photos to my online store.

The prettiest thing I did this week was the store display ceiling:

The ceiling of our display house at
Happily Ever After.

It was a very easy ceiling to make.  I am too busy at the moment to cut strip woods and crown moldings to create a drop, tray, or Victorian, ceiling.  World Market has this paper/Styrofoam ceiling product.  It is supposed to be a "tin" ceiling, and it is paintable!

Above is the full sheet as it's sold; Below is the section I cut out
of my sheet to create the layer look in the ceiling.

 I didn't want to put the full sheet on the ceiling: I wanted it to look more Victorian and their ceilings frequently have murals or paintings or other designs in the center of their ceilings.  So I cut out the center of my 'tin' ceiling sheet (I should have had patience and used a sharp exacto knife, but I wanted to finish it in one day so I used a dull blade and it did rip my edges a little bit but luckily it didn't show too much once I painted it).

Then I painted the sheet sage green to match the decor of the house.  But the delicate, interesting design on the ceiling doesn't pop out when it's all white or all sage green . . .

The detail on the tin ceiling is amazing, but hard to see.

Highlighting the detailing on the ceiling sheet.
I used various color Sharpies on this scrap piece.

 So I used a Metallic Gold Sharpie marker to outline all the detailing on the sheet.  But the center of my ceiling was still painted white and I couldn't decide how to finish it off: just painting it gold was too plain when compared to the rest of the ceiling and putting a mural in that spot didn't match the color scheme.  I considered painting the center gold and putting a medallion in the center to dress it up.  But then I found a scrap of some wallpaper left over from when I worked on the customer's Versailles palace last year.  It was the exact shade of gold as my Sharpie marker and it was the exact size I needed to fill in the center rectangle!

Then came the second obstacle: the ceiling sheet wasn't as wide as the ceiling.  So I filled in the sides with a wooden trim painted sage green that had a swirly design similar to the wallpaper in the center.  Then I markered-up the detail pattern!  (Okay, 'markered-up' isn't a real word, but the paint, glue, and marker fumes may have killed a few brain cells!)

These wood trims had a similar pattern as the center wallpaper!

So I glued all the components on to the display dollhouse ceiling.  All total, including paint drying time, it took less than a day to do.

Finished Ceiling.