The Edge

The latest hand made card design. I wanted something super simple, overall, so that the papers I used would kind of take center stage. I ended up making a set of 8. (9 total, counting the one I made as a practice template.) They are all in different background colors. I think there were 2 orange, 2 pink, 2 blue, and 2 yellow. And the bird on them is either blue or green, depending on what I thought went better with the background colors.

Anyhow, hopefully they aren't too lame. =P

( Card Photos Here )

I have two rows of small windows (3 panes each) on either side of my front door. When we first moved into our house, the previous owners had put up the standard shears over them - the kind that are bunched and gathered on small tension rods at the top and bottom of the windows. I didn't much like the way that looked. It didn't let in very much light, and the rods were bent and unattractive. I used stained glass paint to paint them with a free-hand rose design. That was a fun project, and it stayed up for quite a while. After about 7 years in the house, though, I was tired of the way it looked. Plus, we are lucky enough to get quite a bit of sun on the front side of the house -- great for light through the windows on the second and third floors, but terrible for fading out the stained glass paint. I got tired of repainting them to keep the colors fresh and unfaded.

Several months ago, I had my dad scrape off all the stained glass paint during one of their visits. Truthfully, I didn't ask him to do it. I had already started it, but had had to leave the job only partially done. He decided to finish it up for me. The paint was a booger bear to get off the windows, which is not good news for me, as I also used this finish on a HUGE window in our master bathroom. But, oh well ... that's another story for another time. Heh.

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with the windows. I couldn't find any ready-made curtains or hangings that I liked enough to put up. I checked into commissioning stained glass panels to hang over the windows, but that was super expensive. So, I taped white paper over them to keep people from being able to see in. Picture it: White paper attached with masking tape. It was very "WT chic". =P

After quite a bit of debating, I decided I would frost the windows. Up to this point, I had only used etching cream for frosting glass. I loved the look of it, and the cream works really, really well. But I wasn't sure I wanted to put anything that permanent up on those windows ... and the cream really smells. It's also incredibly caustic and dangerous to work with, so I wasn't in a huge hurry to experiment with it again. Instead, I found a frosting spray that sprays directly onto glass. My initial idea was to frost 6 panes from photo frames and hang those over the windows -- again, to avoid the danger of doing anything permanent to the actual windows. That idea didn't pan out, but, in experimenting with my photo frame glass, I found out the frosting spray worked really well for making the types of designs I wanted on the windows. Score! In the end, I decided to spray directly onto the windows. It's not strictly permanent, as I can scrape it off. I just think it'll be a pain and a half to do so, based on my experience with the stained glass paint. >.O

Anyhow ... pics! It was a simple project, but there are several pics because it took a while to do. ( Read more... )