Making it Rain Gold at Shady Lady

Since we were invited back for more muraling at Shady Lady, we took the opportunity to add a little more glitz to our original ceiling swirls by adding a few touches of gold leaf. If you've never worked with gold leaf before, it's kind of like painting with butterfly wings. You can't really breathe in the presence of gold leaf because the slightest breeze will send it floating delicately away. Basically how you use it is to first apply an adhesive to the surface you want to glamorize, then you place thinner-than-paper sheets of metal on the sticky surface and brush away any excess. Doing this on a ceiling is interesting because you get little flecs of shimmering gold fluttering down all over, everywhere. It's a beautiful process, but one best done with lots of tarps and as we learned, protective goggles.