Originally I had painted the benches in the bay windows white, but that looked too boring for such an elegant shop. I’d already found this marble wallpaper that’s perfect for the shop counter I plan on building and soon decided it would look great in the windows too. Then I had the additional idea of gluing the paper to custom-cut balsa wood in order to create a slight ledge, which would be a little more realistic.
Creating a paper template for each window was the most difficult part. Once I had those sized properly, cutting the wood was pretty easy. Here are the two pieces of wood, with the corresponding marble paper trimmed to size. I painted the wood white, since there will be a slight gap on the side edges where the paper won’t cover. (Also, I’ve read it’s important to use paint or primer to help protect the wallpaper from acids in the wood.)
The wallpaper is fairly matte, and I wasn’t really happy with the look. I tried several different solutions before finally settling on one I was happy with. First, I tested three different brands of glossy spray sealer. The first two caused the ink to darken and discolor. Only the Krylon didn’t have this problem, though none of the brands gave a particularly glossy finish. I was curious about UV resin, something I’ve seen used a lot with polymer clay. But as I expected, it was too shiny for my purpose, plus it didn’t self-level very well and left some unattractive ripply brushstrokes. Finally, I tried some satin self-adhesive laminate paper. It was thin enough to fold over the exposed ledge and gave the perfect amount of sheen (though this doesn’t show very well in the photo).
The last step: gluing them in place!
