DIY Painted Window: Santa's Sweet Shoppe

by Lynn @ Nourish and Nestle

4 Materials

I have been channeling Gingerbread Men and Candy Canes this Christmas, so when little nugget of an idea planted in my mind...I had to follow it. Luckily, this was a very easy DIY because my to-do list (which doesn't include making a charming painted bakery window) is growing by the minute.

I knew that I needed to find an old window for this idea. Our architectural salvage store is only open on Saturdays, so I told myself that if I went to the salvage store and they didn’t have what I needed I would shelf my idea until next year. But, that crafting kismet angel was sitting on my shoulder and, as luck would have it, I found the perfect window.

What you need for a Painted Window:

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A clean Window ( I know…Captain Obvious, here)

A Paint Marker that is suitable for glass, like this or this

Your design. I made my design on Publisher. I set the size of my document exactly the size of my window, in this case 24″ by 24″. The printer used 9 sheets of paper to print the whole 24′ by 24″ design. The gingerbread man was from a collection I purchased from The Hungry JPEG.

Tape

That’s it…that’s all you need to make this window!

How I Made my Painted Bakery Window

It’s really important that your glass is very clean I actually put mine in the shower to clean it off. I wasn’t interested in cleaning off any of the ‘chippy’ paint, of which there is quite a bit, but I did need to get the layers of dirt and grime off. Then I also cleaned the glass with glass cleaner, just to make sure it was grime-free.

Because I painted my image on the back of the glass, I placed my design on the front…right side up. Just a side note here…You’ll notice that my printed image contains several more graphics than what I finally ended up with. The reason is that I had originally thought to paint the various sweets with different colors of paint. But…when I gave the paints a try on a spare piece of glass, I really didn’t like how it looked. The brush strokes were very evident and it reminded me of a bargain store window as opposed to the bakery shop window I was aiming for .

Once I started rethinking my design, I decided to leave of all the images except for the gingerbread man…and I am so glad I went that route.

To paint your window, tape your design in place on the front of your window. Once it’s in place, turn the window over. Place a towel or something between the design and your surface so that the papers are pushed up against the glass. This will make it easier to follow your design. The following image shows the window flipped over. The paper with the design is underneath the glass.

With the paint pen, trace over your lettering and design. With an alcohol based paint pen, you can easily fix mistakes with a paper towel dipped in rubbing alcohol. I also used a razor blade a few times to scrape of any errant marks.

I guess you could paint on the front of the glass, but I opted for the back side because you’d be less likely to see the stroke/brush marks left from the pen (it is smoother looking on the front side) and because I don’t have to worry about using glass cleaner on the letters