Confession time; I love old windows. They have oodles of potential. And, I just happen to have oodles of old windows. Gotta love craigslist, right? Anyway, I did this quite some time ago, so I don't have any pictures of the process. Boo. I can tell you how I did it, you'll just have to do some reading. I'll try not to confuse you along the way. Alright, let's do this.

Here's my window picture frame:


For the photo I just threw in some images I printed out from MorgueFile, but eventually I'll get some nice family ones in there. (If you look closely, you can clearly see that I need to change the drum in my printer...)

So, the first thing I did was strip the old paint off the wood frame, and sanded it. Then came the paint- I chose a glossy black. I painted the frame, the sashes, and the little metal latch piece all black, just to be nice and uniform. Two coats later, that was done.

The next step was to paint the words onto the glass. I found a font I liked, typed out the words, printed them (I don't remember the size I used... or the font name...) and taped the paper to the front of the window. Then (I'm sure I made this part a little more difficult than I needed to...) I used a lamp behind the paper so that I could easily trace the words with a paint brush. I know it would have been easier to tape the paper to the inside of the glass and paint the words on the outside, but I wanted the glass to be easy to clean, and I didn't want the words to wear off over time.

Alright, next step. I used scrapbook paper for the 'matting'. First I measured the glass, then cut the paper to fit nice and snug. Then came the fun part: I scrunched the paper up into a ball, flattened it out, and lightly ran some fine-grit sandpaper over it. That gave the paper a nice, crackly, old look. I ironed the paper under a towel to really flatten it out. Then I cut out either 4"x6" or 5"x7" spaces for the pictures to fit in.

To get the paper mat to stay in place and not leave gaps between it and the glass, I used Mod Podge and stuck it on. Let it dry, stick some pictures in, and there you go. A beautiful, unique picture frame.

Now the only thing I haven't done yet is hang this thing. It's pretty heavy, so I thing I'm going to use some eye hooks in the top and some cord or chain and make sure it's hanging from studs in the wall... but like I said, I haven't gotten that far yet. As soon as I do, I'll put it up on here. Yay!