A feature of many palaces I researched was having murals and/or intricate detailing on the ceilings. I decided I would try to accomplish this with a ceiling medallion and a vinyl decal. I had success with using vinyl decals for last year’s Sugar Plum Forest theme, so I was confident this would be an easy wow-moment feature.
I was excited to order my custom decal in Royal Blue and Bight Yellow, figuring I would have a perfect match with the other items I ordered for the room. This was my first realization that all Royal Blues are not created equally. As you can see in comparing some velvet ribbon to the decal, the blues are not the same.
I could have gone with it and just said “I am going to do an interpretation of Royal Blues for this theme,” but this blue skewed too dark. If it had been lighter and more of a Azure, would have kept it. Since the maker did deliver what her printing device called Royal Blue, and there were no free do-overs, I decided to scrap the decal in general. I will salvage some of it in my make up design.
I ordered a medallion that was similar in style to the frames, and painted it the same yellow color. I now have consistency in the yellow color on three planes in the room: the ceiling, the front wall and the back wall. I am surprising pleased as I expected the yellows to be the hardest to replicate.
Even thought the medallion was split, which would lead to an easier install since I wasn’t removing the canopy, the hole needed to enlarged to fit around the canopy (this is common for most of these medallion styles. Well, my Dremel wasn’t cooperating so I did get the hole big enough but not clean enough. Remember, feathers are a decorator’s best friend and can hide most imperfections. I used some mat and Command® picture hangers to temporarily adhere to the ceiling.
One of the must haves in a palace seems to be a sparkly chandelier- or two, or a lot. I have a minimal style chandelier in the dining room that I spruce up each year with a bit of trickery. And there is always a bit of sparkle, or a lot.
Since I no longer had the vinyl decal adding the detail to the ceiling, I had to find a way to “enlarge” the chandelier. I had this metallic banding I had bought for this theme and wasn’t sure how to incorporate it. I decided to cut into stands and have them drape from the six scrolls on the medallion. This would add some visual grandness to the chandelier. I cut out some of the shapes from the unused decal and used them for my anchor points. I added some beautiful velvet cording I got from Italy (nice tie in, pun intended) with silk ornaments and a few blue chandelier jewels. Command® hooks keep everything in place, and some feather boa conceals the mechanics. Ceiling = done.
For the rest of the chandelier, I added some yellow crystal swags to the perimeter. I again created custom drops in Royal Blue and Lemon Yellow and hung them from the bobeches. I upped the grandeur by adding a oversized baroque crystal from the bottom, and tassels from the bottom of each light point.
Since I only have the room (and money) to have one chandelier in the room, how to replicate the abundance of chandeliers? Time to utilize one of my Christmas collections — chandelier ornaments.
Inspired by this year’s HGTV series Biggest Little Christmas Showdown, I thought it could be fun to create a mini room feel by hanging them en masse from the “ceiling” of the picture window. I wanted to play with scale so I incorporated regular sized taper candles in fancy holders to substitute for a missing palace element – the candelabra.
Chandelier mini room
There you have it. I address large scale, details, and color scheme to get the structure of the room. Now on with the details.
NEXT UP: Replicating stained glass windows.