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Fleur-de-lis window

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First, a short tutorial on enlarging a pattern. I can’t paint freehand. I wanted to do a Fleur-de-lis , but didn’t want to try to do it without a pattern. I found an image online using google images. I printed it on card stock, and cut it out.

projector stencil

In this photo, you can see that I have the negative image suspended on a yardstick. I dug in the basement and found my mom’s old movie projector. I set it on a table and used the projection to display the image on the wall. I didn’t have any poster board, so I repurposed a large gift box as a stencil. I simply traced the image and cut it out.
making a stencilI placed the cut out image on my window, taped around it and put some newspaper around it.

window painted with stencilI spray painted the stencil and got this sort of lopsided Fleur-de-lis. 🙂 I touched up the original stencil and painted it again. I wanted to add a word at the bottom, and I decided to do Bienvenue. (welcome)

Being a former teacher (19 years) I have a huge stockpile of different kinds of papers. One such paper is some removable label paper. It sort of has a slick finish. I printed out the word in Print Shop (because I just can’t seem to get the hang of Photo Shop) I had to flip it and print it backwards. I then used scissors to cut out the stencil. I tried to use an exacto knife, but because of all my years of experience of cutting, I found that scissors worked a lot better for me and was much quicker.
stencil window
Here, I have it all stuck to the window, and the window protected from over spray by all this newspaper.

broken windowAnd THIS my friends is what happens when you spray paint outdoors on a windy day! I spray paint in an old carport where there is no wind. But being my impatient self, I set the window up against the garage so that it would dry quicker. I received a phone call and had to dash off to run an errand.
broken stenciled windowThis is what I found when I got home! A VERY shattered and broken window! I was very, very sad! I worked oh so hard on this project. I did learn a lot about making a stencil, and cutting out the word, etc. The part that makes me the saddest is, this is the only window I had like this. (no divided panes) It was perfectly chippy too! All I can say is, I think I see a chalkboard in my future.
edited to add—you can see what I did with this window in my post Chicken Wire Memo Center

gail

15 Comments

  1. This happened to me too – except my husband did it. I was trying to give my friend one of our window panes. She happened to be our mail lady. Well, I had asked my husband to watch for her to come. He decided instead of watching, he’d lean it up on the mailbox. One gust of wind late – Voila!Anyway, I just wanted to mention that you might measure your windown and call your local glass company to get a price. I talked to a lady who does windows for craft fairs, and she said it’s really cheap to replace. I didn’t totally believe her until we replaced a small window in our Vintage Airstream – it cost us $3.53 including tax! I know you’re probably not wanting a redo anytime soon with the cute project, but at least you can salvage the window, yet!

  2. I’m so sorry!!! That kind of thing has happened to me too and you just have to say “oh well” but for a few moments—uuuuuhhhhggg!!

  3. Oh no, I’m so sorry that your project didn’t turn out how you’d hoped, but we all sure appreciate the tutorial! 🙂 Thanks for linking up!

  4. Aww…that would break my heart too! Gorgeous idea though…thanks fo sharing the how to, and visiting my blog! I appreciate it!

  5. I am so sad for you… I have the same kind of luck as you… I can just feel your disappointment… it was looking so good too… chalk it up to a really good experience…

  6. This is great and very timely…I have some burlap I’ve been wanting to stencil a fleur-de-lis pattern on.
    Thanks!
    Anne

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