Starry Night

When we painted Oliver’s ceiling, we kept comparing it to the night sky. This evolved into wouldn’t it be cool to do something with stars on the ceiling? Oliver of course LOVED the idea of stars (just like his sheets!). We just had to figure out the best way to do it. When I was in middle school I put up those cheesy plastic glow stars on my bedroom ceiling and they are still there glowing away, glued to the drywall. But those were out - too tacky right? I was hoping for something subtle that would only appear at night.

I researched different paints and stickers, different painting techniques. Unfortunately all of the paints I found were either white or the glow paint needed to be on white for it to glow. I found one brand of paint that might have worked on navy blue, but it was kind of expensive and I didn't know how well it would really work. The stickers and glow paint markers I found either had bad reviews or didn’t glow much. We thought about hanging LED twinkle lights but it wouldn’t look very nice during the day (and installing LED lights in the ceiling wasn’t an option since we boarded up our attic floor a couple years ago).

Then one evening Oliver was at his grandparents house and saw the old cheesy plastic 90’s stars on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. He was totally floored, they were magical to him. I had to admit, I was really impressed at how brightly they glowed all these years later. And they didn’t look… terrible. Maybe I was being biased against them? Oliver loved them and his new big boy room was supposed to be all about him. Parents make concessions all the time? Happiness over good taste. After a quick search on amazon we had 200 stars coming our way for $7 - WAY less money than we would have ever spent on paint or fancy stickers.

And I have to admit, sticking those little stars up with a tiny dot of stickum that comes in the package is a lot easier than breaking our backs trying to paint a magical galaxy on the ceiling. Especially when Oliver loves the plastic stars so much. I’m a little bit worried about the fresh paint, but painting over the stickum dots in a few years would still be a lot less work than painting over painted stars. And right now they are fully moveable and removeable without any damage.

Mike got really into it and decided (since he was the one going up on the step ladder anyways) that we should do it right and put up constellations.  He did a really awesome job and it looks brilliant laying on Oliver’s bed. Very magical and fun. And those stars are BRIGHT- even an hour later they are still glowing (not as brightly but clearly visible). Unfortunately they don't photograph well in the dark, but you'll have to trust me that it's pretty great (even if they are cheesy plastic stars!).