I’ve been redesigning the guest room in my home, and it is becoming the most magical place in the world.
I started by painting the ceiling dark blue, with stars and galaxies to create a beautiful deep feeling. The walls were a bright yellow color originally. I wanted a blue-gold ombre color on the walls, so blended them from the dark blue of the ceiling through an emerald green and into the yellow. It looks gorgeous.
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For the low part of the ceiling, I wanted to invoke an alchemical laboratory, or the Ravenclaw common room. I decided to create a mural up there. I’ve never done a ceiling mural before, and the texture on the ceiling is pretty bumpy which makes painting details pretty difficult. I’m also not the greatest illustration-style painter! Painting clean lines on a bumpy ceiling is hard.
Technology to the rescue. I used my Cricut Maker Vinyl Cutter.
The Cricut design space has a lot of downloadable designs, and I found both zodiac “statues” and zodiac symbols that I really liked. I chose shiny vinyl sticker material with various finishes and colors.. all metallic, but I used antique golds and bright golds and copper colors, with hammered finishes and shiny finishes and matte finishes. Mixing and matching all these different shades really adds a lot of depth and interest to my design.
For the details of the sun and planets, I used a combination of downloaded designs and original designs. I was easy to modify the downloaded designs using Cricut’s tools, and make them exactly what I wanted.
The mandala is maybe 8-10 feet across. Making giant circles can be tricky! For this part, my low-tech solution was to pound a nail into the middle of the circle and tie a string to it, with a pencil attached to the other end of the string. Then I could use the pencil like a giant “compass” and draw a perfect circle.
I used narrow copper tape to create the outer circles, then stuck the vinyl stickers in between. To add another dimension, the inner circles are painted in antique gold acrylic paint. I love this effect — the paint looks a bit rough and really sort of “old” — like, as though it’s a holdover from an earlier mandala that’s been restored or updated with the shiny vinyl.
I added planets and stars and details and I absolutely LOVE the finished result. 🙂
![](https://i0.wp.com/erinstblaine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2AAF2DA8-9299-4ED9-8509-C8B0EACB344A-1.jpg?resize=400%2C300&ssl=1)