Friday, August 3, 2012

Painting on Old Windows

Day after day, I drove past a lonely, side-of-the-road store that sells old windows.  I wondered what I could do with one after seeing so many different ideas on Pinterest

While we were in the midst of looking at about a thousand houses before we chose our home, I came across a cute house with an acrylic painted, floral designed, repurposed window.  It inspired me to finally pick out one for myself...or two...or three. 

a couple of my before windows


First, I cleaned the wood frames to prep them for painting.  I used "Krud Kutter-Gloss Off" from Sherwin Williams.  This amazing product can be used to prep for several different painting projects.  I like it, because it doesn't have harmful vapors, and is supposedly what they use in Elementary schools to repaint things.  You don't even have to sand some things when you use Gloss Off.






My windows were a little moldy looking in some areas, so I wanted to repaint the frames, but give them an antiqued look.  I went with crackle paint. 

All you have to do to use the crackle medium is to paint a base color, slather on a heavy coat of crackle medium (if you want it to really "crackle"), then paint a final contrasting paint color (so that the base color will show through the cracks).  When you apply the crackle medium, you have to work fast, because it dries very quickly.  If you go over the already drying crackle coat, it will peel off and won't crack.

These are the colors I chose for one of the windows.

the green base color


after the white top coat

Something really great about painting on glass with acrylic paint is that you can use a razor blade to easily scrape off any mistakes.  I did a sloppy paint job, because I knew it would be harder to be careful painting, than it would to scrape off the mistakes later.


Next, you can just go crazy painting whatever design you like.  Don't forget about the razor blade!  It's like an eraser and detail tool.  I used it to form little details in these dogwood flower petals.

I painted this window for my mother-in-law.



This one was for my mom.


It's so fun to paint on glass!  I'm currently working on a window for myself.  I'll post it when it's ready. 

If you try this project, email me your final product!!  I'd love to see what you come up with.

Linked up with:
The Frugal Girls 

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