I don't know if I had mentioned this, but I live in an older neighborhood. Most of the homes were built between 1900 and 1940 (some are older and some are younger). I love my neighborhood. I love walking through it and admiring the architecture and the history of each home.
Living in an older neighborhood, you see a lot of construction. Mostly home improvement projects that aren't major, but sometimes you will have projects that create a mess or require a lot of work. Our house did not have heat (or water) when we first bought it. One thing that usually gets replaced are the windows, especially in a rental property. Older windows tend to be draftier and much less energy efficient, so new landlords will replace the old windows with the new vinyl ones. I am all about saving energy, but these windows just don't look as good as the originals. If I am lucky, the owners will put the old windows on the curb for the city to discard. I have acquired quite the collection of windows from my neighborhood. I have single pane windows and multi-pane windows in all sizes. I actually may have a window hoarding problem to be quite honest.
Something had to be done about all of the windows that I was accumulating. I decided to start with one at a time. I actually had seen a really cute vinyl design on Pinterest a few years ago that I thought would be perfect for this window. I sanded the widow frame down to get rid of the extra paint and edges from being painted while installed, and then I had to re-glaze most of the window (since it is just decoration, this step isn’t necessary, but it looks a lot better when you do it). Since I had to wait for the glaze to set before I could continue, I took a week off from the project and worked on other things, like a message board for my mom for her birthday, but that is another post for another time. Finally, the glaze was set enough for paint.
Now for the fun part, creating the perfect vinyl design on my Cricut Craft Room. I had the measurements from the window already so it was just a matter of sizing each piece for the window. I cut the pieces out of the vinyl (I used 3 colors, but you could do it all in the same color or have birds of different colors) and laid them out before I peeled the backing off. Sometimes vinyl is hard to work with, but this turned out really cool. I was a little annoyed that “LOVE” was crooked, but I ended up liking the way it looked.
This project was a blast to make and is really simple for beginners. I actually posted a picture of it on Facebook and within an hour, I had multiple offers to buy it. It now is hanging in a co-worker’s living room.