Wallpapering a porthole window

[Roland Perry]

My house has two "porthole" windows (approx two ft diameter). One has a sharp edge between the "circular window sill" and the interior wall, but the other has a rounded edge.

The former is fairly easy to wallpaper, and cut around the sharp edge, but I'm stumped by the one with a rounded edge. I don't want to have to convert it to a sharp edge.

Previously, the room had lining paper painted the same off-white colour as the sill, so the somewhat ragged circular cut wasn't very obvious. However, SWMBO wants this replaced by contrasting wallpaper and sill.

Is there any trick to achieve this other than freehand (I don't think you can buy circular border). What's the chances of being able to concoct some sort of enormous pair of compasses with a razor blade at the end?

[Frank Erskine]

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 15:30:39 +0100, Roland Perry had this to say:

Easy - make a large pair of compasses by hinging two bits of wood together, a bit like school blackboard compasses, then fit some sort of point (perhaps a scriber) to one leg and a scalpel blade to t'other.

[The3rd Earl Of Derby]

Any chance of a pic?

I'd put a piece of stiff cardboard up against the porthole with a decent sized hole in the middle of the cardboard so you can get your hand and lower arm in,then with the cardboard held flat aginst the porthole get a pencil and draw a line around the inner porthole on the cardboard and cut out the shape and this will serve as a template to position over the wallpaper for trimming.

[Guy King]

The message from Roland Perry contains these words:

Easier than you think. Though there's no need to cut on the fly, you can pencil a circle using a string and pin, then cut very carefully with scissors.

However, unless you can get amazingly stretchy paper there's no way a flat surface can be made to conform to a surface curving in two planes at once.

[RedOnRed]

Put the paper over the window and punch a hole through it, making sure the window's open of course and then sort of cut round it a hole shape of similar size to window.

Hope that helps. By the way, I went to the Chuckle Brothers School Of Fine Decorating.