Window Painting and Lighting How to Guide

Would you like to add a little funky lighting to your home? Are you dying for a new and innovative craft to keep you busy while providing a special flair to your home décor? If so, I have a great idea that you might like to try out. I call it Window Painting and Lighting.

A few years ago, I found myself on a student's budget with a desire for more interesting artwork in my apartment than a Catpower poster and a signed Tony Bennett glossie.

I was starving my way through college working at a really hip bar and grill near the University of Memphis called RP Tracks.

The R and P were renovating the building, and I noticed the construction workers were actually removing windows from the building with the frames around the windows still in tact.

I know, maybe that's a ridiculous thing to be surprised by, but I'd just kind of figured that they would knock them out with sledge hammers or something.

I asked the foreman if I could take home the windows that were being left out on the curb for the garbage collectors to clear away.

The foreman said I was welcome to whatever I could find and use. I picked out two windows that were in sound condition. By sound condition, I mean that they were not covered in bugs or broken sharps of glass or splinters of wood. I was able to put them in my hatchback and maneuver them up the stairs to my studio apartment with little excitement or danger.

Once I was safely secured in my apartment with the window frames, I experimented with a variety of paints. I tried oil paints, acrylics, and oil pastels with linseed oil.

Ultimately, I found that it was easiest for me to manipulate the acrylics more so than the oil pastels or paints. The oil paint takes forever to dry. The oil pastels clump and smear more than the acrylics.

Ordinarily, the richness of an oil paint or pastel would be worth the trouble, but not in this case. See, the window itself will add richness to the painting. If you paint on one side, you can hang the window so that the side that is painted is the backside. This will display the window with the smooth side showing and it will have a very rich and dense color to it.

I used one of the two windows I took from the restaurant I was working in and practiced. With the second window, I painted a face on it.

The face was as large as the window itself. I hung it in my apartment for a few years, and then I sold the painting to a local business owner.

Since then, I have acquired other windows in the same manner, and you can see the photos of them here on this article.

If you are interested in making a little splash of color to your home, find a window frame like the ones shown here. You can get them at junk yards and construction sites. There should be places in your area that have old window frames for sale.

If you don't have any renovations going on in your area, shop around and you can find one. You may have to go to a store like Garden Ridge or Home Depot, but they are there.

Once you have the window, you will need paint. You can use oil if you like, but acrylic or tempera will dry faster. I have decided that using a dry sponge as a paint brush is the most efficient and effective way to apply the paint.

If you feel you cannot draw a squiggled line to save your life, then just slap on colors. Pick a couple or a few that you would like to see on a regular basis, and paint each window pain a different color.

Make a checkerboard or make a collage of color. You can add spots or stripes. You can use something like a coffee can to outline perfect circles in each window pane and color it a different or an opposite color. Have fun with it.

When you are done painting, Hang it using braces on the wall. Make sure that there is an electrical outlet near enough to the window that you can plug in Christmas lights. Hang the Christmas lights around the frame as shown in the photos. The lights will bring out the color and provide you with a fresh style at a minimal price.