Patriotic Craft Time!

My husband can finally see something come from one of these old windows I've been carting around through the move, hahaha, yay!

I've had this project in mind for a while and I was glad to finally get around to it this weekend! I used all leftover or free materials: Leftover acrylic paint from a painting party for a friend quite a while back (a great idea for a housewarming party for a friend's first place, fyi), a wooden star as a guide shape, leftover tape from garage sale, and a neighbor's old window that they left curbside when they got new ones.

After thorougly cleaning the glass and frame, I started by measuring out stripes.

If anyone knows how to effectively clean "chippy wood" without breaking off the paint chips or soaking the wood so that it swells or needs a long time to dry, please let me know. I may love shabby chic decor, but I am not one of those people who thinks shabby means dirty. I want things to look antiqued, but not dirty. Going into this project, however, I knew that this was destined to hang on a wall outside, so I didn't stress too hard over the dirt that was super-stuck in the cracks of the paint.

Then I taped all the way across. I made sure to start with red paint first and do the white second because I knew if I painted red on the backside of a white stripe by accident, it might show through.

Now if you're doing this project yourself, you might want to invest the dollar into a foam stamp for the star. I just happened to have this wooden shape handy and really didn't want to hike it to the mall (my nearest craft store...yarg mall parking) just for a stamp. So I used this to give me my outlines, then painted them with a brush after that.

Obviously it's pretty important to make sure your first layer of paint is dry before painting the next color. With the acrylic a few times I thought it was dry, went to add a second coat and then accidentally messed up the first, non-dry coat. Woops. That's the great thing about this style, though, streaks are at home.

Let it dry in the near-summer sunshine....

Grand reveal.....
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Ta-da!

Definitely a little more schoolhouse-style than I was going for, but that's alright, I still like it!

Now to add some hooks to the backside and hang it up outside!

Hope you had room to have some creative fun this weekend, too!