Ceiling Lighting: Illuminated Birds Seen Through a Fake Hole

I love the time of the year when the sun rises early and I see the sun shining and I hear the birds singing in the morning before I have to get out of bed. But right now it is winter, so when I have to get up, it is still dark outside. I do have an alarm clock that uses the sound of singing birds, so I thought, why not make a light that looks like I see birds flying in the sky?

The ceiling of our bedroom is made of wood and I had a few leftover pieces in our attic, so I used them to make a fake hole in the ceiling. Then I added a strip of LED's and made some birds from a thin aluminum sheet. On the photos you can see the result showing my ceiling lightning during the night and during the day with the lights switched on and off.

In the next steps you can see how I made it.

I like drawing, so I started to sketch some birds on a piece of paper. When I had half a bird, I used scissors to cut out this half bird and then folded the paper so I could draw and cut the second half of each bird real easy.

(If you cannot draw a bird, you can search for "bird silhouette" on the internet and you will find many examples. Just pick one that you like, print it and use that print as your template.)

I made three slightly different birds and placed the paper templates on a thin sheet of 0.5 mm thick aluminum. I used some of the paper templates more than once, so in total I would get 7 birds.

I covered the aluminum sheet with some tape, so the aluminum would not get scratched from cutting. Also, the black lines from the marker were drawn on the tape, so when I removed the tape after cutting the birds, the black lines from the marker were also gone.

I tried several tools to cut the aluminum: I started with large tin snips, but it was difficult to cut all the round shapes and tight corners with them. Then I tried a jeweler's saw, but the aluminum is too flexible, so the saw got stuck and did not work. Then I tried a dremel tool, but I was also not happy with how that went. Finally I tried some small scissors (the gray and orange one on the photo) and that worked perfectly, so I cut all the birds with those scissors.

After cutting the birds the aluminum had some sharp edges, so I used three small files to make the edges smoother. This step is not really needed because when the birds are at the ceiling, nobody is going to touch the birds and the edges were also not that sharp, but I filed the edges anyway.

We used to have a light in the bedroom that was functional but not really beautiful and also not very practical as it was hanging too low. I accidentally hit that light very often while changing my clothes, so I am happy that now this light is finally gone.

It was not just a matter of removing one light and installing the next one, because for the new ceiling lighting I use LED strips and they come with a plug that needs a socket. The connection for the previous light was not a socket, but just two wires in the ceiling. I therefore installed a socket and placed it in such a location, that it is not visible when I look at the new light while I am still laying in bed. I also added a photo of the final situation where I hid the power cord by placing it inside a small white plastic cable tray.

I assume that you know how to electrically connect ceiling lighting if you are considering to build this project, so I did not document how I connected the wires to the power socket. Also, depending on where you live, there might be local regulations that specify that you should connect the socket in a different way than I did.

So let's consider this a side step and get back to building the light.

As you could see on the photos at the previous step, the ceiling of our bedroom is covered with white planks. Last year I modified a small part of this ceiling and I kept the left over pieces in the attic. I climbed up there, took some pieces to the garage and used a saw to cut the pieces to a size that I thought would be suitable for this project. The entire rectangle formed by the planks is 66 x 83 cm.

Then I marked an area in the middle where I wanted to make the hole and went back to the garage.

(The photos with the red workbench are made in the garage. As you can see it is much darker in the garage than in the room upstairs where I made the rest of the project. What you cannot see, is that is is also quite cold in the garage in winter. But since I needed the vise and I do not like sawdust inside our house, the next steps are done in the garage.)

Each plank had a black line, which I made with a marker to indicate where the ruptured edge of the plank should come. I clamped the plank down to my workbench and used a hammer and chisel to remove part of the wood. The white layer was now removed but the edge of the plank was still very straight and did not look like a ruptured piece of wood. So I clamped the plank in the vise and used pliers to tear off part of the wooden edge. I added another piece of wood in the vise to protect the white front side of the plank from getting scratched by the jaws of the vise.

This first plank went fine, so I continued with the other planks.

After making the ruptured edges on several planks with the method that I described in the previous step, I thought that it might go quicker if I just hit the plank with a hammer, so it would rupture and break.

It did break, but not on the line where I wanted it to break. At first I thought that I would keep that additional crack visible, but I did not really like how it looked, so later I made this broken plank a bit shorter than I originally planned.

I went back to my original method from the previous step and finished all the planks. Then I placed them in the form of a rectangle and added the little strips that go in between the planks.

I cut some wooden slats to make a frame, used screws and some wood glue to assemble the frame.

I choose to use screws as that makes the planks firmly attached to the frame. The downside is of course that the heads of the screws were visible.

Since I did not want the heads of the screws to be visible, I added some filler to hide the screws.

The wooden slats were visible from the sides, so I decided to hide them by gluing strips to the sides. The strips I used were intended to fill the groove between the planks and they had the same white color and fake wood pattern as the planks and I had some leftover pieces anyway, so why not make use of them? The white strips were a bit narrower than the slats, so I filled the corners with acrylic sealant to make the corners look nice.

I also used some paint leftover from a painting-by-numbers kit and used that to paint the filler on the screws. The filler was really white, but the planks where more a mix of beige and white, so I mixed the paint to get as close to the color of the planks as I could.

I cut some tiny wooden slats that had the same width as the LED strip that I planned to use and I glued these slats to the back side of my planks. It was a bit of a guess how far the LED strip had to be from the edge to get a nice glow without actually seeing the LEDs. On most points the LED strip was about 5 cm (2 inches) from the edge and in general that was good, but it could have been a bit more. The distance to the edge should certainly not be less than 5 cm, because then the LEDs would be visible.

I used some tape to attach the wires to the planks to keep them out of sight too.

I used a sheet of 3 mm thick MDF which was already painted white in the factory. I applied blue paint with a brush, but I did not like the brush strokes as they do not look natural. So I used a piece of cloth and tapped it on the paint that I had just applied and that gave the sky a more natural appearance.

I had cut the MDF slightly smaller than the frame, so I did not have to drill a hole for the wire.

Finally I drilled holes on all four corners of the frame, so I could use those holes to mount the frame to the ceiling.

While the frame was still on the table, I switched on the LEDs and put the birds on a location where I liked them. I placed the birds in a V-shape just like they tend to do naturally themselves and I put the back side of two of the birds behind the planks so it looks like they are actually flying over the hole.

The birds are very lightweight so sticking them to the blue sky was just a matter of using some double sided tape.

I screwed the light to the ceiling and waited for the evening to fall to be able to really see the result.

I am happy with how it turned out.