we bought a house that had a room with no windows, it did have a half bath, so we knew the house had been remodeled to add another room behind the wall shown. we added natural light with a custom & crazy skylight. The house had so many additions added over the years, the roof looked like a child’s drawing of a mountain range. we painted the room orange as per request of my 9 year old daughter. the skylight could only go in one place, the back left hand corner of the room. the window was very small, but it was so wonderful to have sunlight. it gave the room life.
how we made the three “windows”…

1.With a yardstick measure the size of the window you would like to make. use a pencil or level to make the lines (we choose three windows, because throughout the house, this was a pattern.)

2. use primer to paint inside your lines-I used blue painter’s tape to keep the lines clean.

3. I used small bottles of acrylic paint. the bottles of paint can be found at art & craft stores. they cost about a $1.25 each.

4. i painted the sky blue, using two shades & then added white to the wet blue to blend, then added more white to define the clouds. when dry, i used about 5 different shades of green for the trees, I started with the darkest greens, dabbing on the paint with a cheap sponge paint ‘brush’. leaving some of the dark to show through…creating depth. These were my evergreens, less detail & smaller means further away…also, decide where the sun is, so that when you do add highlights, they will all be in the right place.

5. for the close up Oak tree…i went outside & found three different size Oak leaves. i traced the leaves onto card stock, to cut each traced leaf out, i used one straight cut to the top curve of the leaf-of my pencil tracing. after i cut each of the three leaves out, i taped close both sides of the card stock on my straight cut to the leaves. Thus, creating a stencil. (great for any art project where you need a custom stencil)

6. with a somewhat rounded pencil tip (so i didnt scratch the paint), I traced my leaves onto the corners of two windows, I mixed the sizes & overlapped the leaves, when I did enough, i chose which leaves would be in the foreground & gently erased the pencil lines in my front leaves, to make them solid.

7. I used dark paint for most of these leaves, making the assumption that these leaves wouldn’t be in the sun, because they are close to the house, so i used the lighter greens as highlights near the edges. i painted the leaves with a pallet of three or four greens on a paper plate, so that I could mix colors as i went. not a rule…it is just easier this way-for me.

8. i used a high gloss acrylic varnish, again found in art & craft stores, to cover the windows. I painted about four coats to add a deep shine, so it would reflect light, like a real window. i chose the cheaper stuff, so if my daughter wanted the windows removed-using cheaper materials insured it wouldn’t be a huge undertaking to remove the windows later.

9. once dry, the final step was the moulding. my husband & i chose pre primed moulding that closely matched the rest of the house. using a plastic miter box & saw, he sawed the measured pieces into the correct sizes. i sanded the corners & painted the trim using the semi gloss interior house paint that we had used throughout the house.

8. after the paint dried, he used a small, thin nails to hang them up. I used caulk from the caulk gun to fill the nail holes & touched up the caulk, with trim paint, for a finished look.

a few years later, we put the house on the market just as the market had begun deflating & sold it within two weeks. the buyer was a lawyer from NYC, she had retired & moved to Alabama to be near her family. i explained to her that the windows would be very easy to remove. she told me that they would remain. she had seen my art throughout the house & in my studio (corner), she said she considered the windows original art by an artist who’s work she loved.

i loved her. 😉