step 2, star ceiling

So, now it was time for step two of Rain Dragon's sky ceiling. I wanted it to be clouds and blue sky during the day but I wanted it to be stars at night.  I wanted the stars to be pretty realistic, those glow-in-the-dark star stickers just didn't seem right after all the work I did to make the clouds. So using the intergoogles I found this make your own planetarium kit  and put it on my Christmas list:

Thanks, Santa!

It was a pretty neat kit. You choose the date and time of your star chart, project it and , following the projection, dab in glow-in-the-dark paint:

I choose Rain's Dragon's birthday as the time and date!

I think the star theater was made for a bigger room because there was a fair amount of distortion. Also, it was impossible to dab the glow in the dark paint in a neat way and at first I was in a nervous panic that I was ruining my clouds.

But, surprisingly, it turned out great! The overall effect is actually rather magical, though you will have to take my word for it because none of the photos came out.  Suffice to say it came out so well that I might do a star ceiling for my studio, too!

sky ceiling, step 1

We're still living in two places but that hasn't stopped us from starting our own personalization in our new house. My pet project is getting Rain Dragon's room ready. I have big plans for it. At first I though I would paint a mural in it like I did for L& R but the view outside Rain Dragon's future window changed my mind:

and I decided on an elaborate sky ceiling instead. First, I needed to paint a daytime sky with soft puffy clouds which meant blue paint on the ceiling:

Rain Dragon watched me with great interest and confusion the whole time. Since she was going to be witness to all my painting I used low voc paint which is pretty amazing-- it really is odorless!--but gave me a bit of shell-shock at the cash register. So I tried to use it sparingly. The color is Benjamin Moore Barely Teal, which is a very light greenish blue instead of the typical sky blue because I wanted more of a fairy tale sky.

But I still wanted the clouds to be realistic looking. So I mapped out cloud formations:

and then I layered in four different shades of white (just in case you want to do this yourself the colors were Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace, Vanilla Ice Cream and then a mixture of Vanilla Ice Cream + Peach Parfait  and a mixture of Vanilla Ice cream + Majestic mauve) to give the clouds depth.  Painting clouds and making them look real isn't that difficult (the trick is to dry brush--not a lot of paint on the brush and be willing to ruin your brush by scrubbing the color in with it), but it is time consuming--mainly because you have to keep going up and down the ladder to figure out each step. It took me a couple days until I was satisfied.

And while I liked how the winter white color of the walls brought out the whiteness of the clouds, I felt it was too cold for a baby's room. So we changed the wall color to a soft cream which makes the clouds look a little peachy--like a clouds at sunrise.

I think it turned out well, if I do say so myself! I admit I'm pretty proud!

Rain Dragon didn't seem that impressed, though. Oh well, maybe step 2 of the sky ceiling-- glow-in-the-dark constellations-- will!