Putting Some Sparkle in the Windows!
4 Materials
$74
4 Hours
Easy
We live in the woods, with no neighbors to peek into our windows, so shades and blinds simply aren't necessary, and who would want to close out all that luscious greenery? But my beautiful windows needed some sprucing up, so being a child of the 70's, I thought, beads! I bought one pre-hung window curtain of acrylic beads called "Aces & Eights, from ShopWildThings, in a six foot length. My plan was to create valances for each window, adding some sparkle without covering the view!
Let me start off by saying I did 3 windows before thinking of posting this, so by now I already had a plan! I wanted my beads to hang within each window, so I bought a square dowel and measured my inner window, then cut the dowel to the right size. I stained the dowel a nice honey brown.
The rod that came with the beads had rings spaced for each of the 15 lengths of beads. I figured the spacing would still work for my dowel, so I put the dowel next to the rod and marked each ring with a dot on the dowel. Then I took a small nail and tapped a starter hole on each dot.
I bought a packet of 100 small eye bolts for under 6 bucks, and screwed an eye bolt into each hole.
Here is what I learned on the first three windows- set up your dowel rod for hanging before you put on the beads! Not that they are heavy, but just less hassle. I figured I wanted the bigger eye hooks about 1 inch from the edge, so I "eyed"it, and screwed them in. Then I could hang a small eye bolt on each eye hook and mark on the dowel where to screw in that eye bolt. (Have I confused you? My job is done!!!
) NOW let's hang beads!
) NOW let's hang beads!
The neat thing about these Aces & Eights acrylic beads is that they have jump rings, allowing you to arrange the lengths just the way you would like them!
Now my sink window sparkles and I can still see the great outdoors!
The acrylic beads reflect the light, creating sparkles. They also look pretty keen from the outside, too!
With one 6 foot long curtain, I made four window valances, and I still have enough to do one more. Pretty awesome, huh?
With one 6 foot long curtain, I made four window valances, and I still have enough to do one more. Pretty awesome, huh?Comments
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3 of 91 comments
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I have a Victorian hanging l lamp in shades of blue and white. Have
been hauling it around for fifty years. The bottom cradle has tiny holes for prisims.. Bought them at an antique store for a dollar each. They don't
all match which makes it interesting.
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Would you believe I had to google what a victorian hanging lamp looked like? They are beautiful! I'll bet yours is too! I love hanging lamps......
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Patty, The lamp came from a home in Norwich, Ct. and now I am in NH by way of Rhode Island. It originally had a chain on it about fifty feet long (not really but long) and every time I have moved it has gotten shorter. It has a crack in the back of the top shade but it is okay and firm. I too live in the woods and would love to implement what you did with your prisims.
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
If I make them the whole way down will it prevent outside lookes in? What about at night with light on, still private?
Where did you purchase your beads? Looks lovely.
This may seem like a rather silly question, but how do the dowels stay up? The windows in my old house scarcely cooperate with tight tension rods, so this eludes me.