Let’s be honest, who among us doesn’t love a stained glass window? They are expressive and colorful and have beautiful transformations as the sun journeys across the sky. While I often dream of having a house akin to Sainte-Chapelle (would you look at that Rose Window - swoon), to date that hasn’t quite happened yet! So, in the meantime I will work with what I have to create something that brightens our spirits and sends a message of love to anyone who passes by and needs a little boost in their day.
Here is what you will need:
Painter’s tape (I used .94in size Frog Tape)
Tempera Paint
Paint brush
Dry erase marker
Water
Windows!
I decided to use a thinner painter’s tape because I didn’t want the black lines to overwhelm our window space, but ultimately your design and window sizes will help you decide what size to use. Before applying the tape, I wiped the windows down with Windex and around the sill to make sure it adhered as well as possible. I knew I wanted to write the word LOVE in our windows so I took careful measurements to make sure that the height and width of the letters were aligned from window-to-window. If you need to make marks on the window use a dry erase marker and it will wipe right off once you have your tape in the right place; and don’t forget to put tape around the trim as well. Also, if you're like me and you're a sucker for a picture with good light you might want to snap a pic of your taped lines when the sun is hitting it just right!
For the paint I used tempera, I liked how it gave a chalky appearance when it dried and that it wasn’t very opaque, allowing lots of light to still shine through. If you want to use a different kind of paint, try watering it down first and testing it out. Now that you are ready to paint, I suggest planning ahead of time where your colors are going to go. For this design, I knew each window would have three colors, so I counted the number of total shapes we needed to paint and divided it by three to see how many of each color we needed to do. As you can see in the picture, I marked each shape with a swipe of color to remind myself which ones I was supposed to do next and I only did one color at a time.
Once the kids and I painted all of the colors we gave it about an hour to dry and then carefully pulled the tape off. I personally wanted the look of lead lines, so I painted them with black; I think this step took me the longest because I didn’t have the tape to rely on for precision anymore. In the picture below you can see in the “E” panel what it would look like if you left the lines un-painted.
Whether you choose to paint the lines or not, you are now all done and you can unveil it to the neighborhood! Since we choose to do a word, it was important for us to decide which direction we placed the letters, we chose to share our love with the world so we made it legible for those outside on the street. We will be leaving the lights on at night, so that our message will shine out to the world and hopefully remind us all that love will be the light that guides us through the dark.
