Imitation Arendelle Castle
Stain glass Window
Eight birthdays
are big in our house. When I say big I mean we go as all out as we can; food,
decorations, games etc. When a child turns eight they pick the theme, then we
look all over for ideas of what has already been done for others parties. We
also come up with ideas of stuff that others have not done. The whole thing is
food, games, decorations, and games that child has selected.
Since we
only go all out twice, eight birthdays and sixteenth it’s not so bad for us as
parents. All other birthdays we still celebrate but they are a lot less of
everything.
Our “Little
Fish” was turning eight a couple of months ago and she wanted a Frozen theme. We dove right in to
researching on-line for ideas. However, there were things she that did have not
DIY online tutorials.
One of
these was her idea for decorating our dining room to look like the Arendelle
Castle. She said “the colors in the windows are very pretty.” I told her that
those colored windows are called stained glass. We talked a little about how
this kind of glass is put together. We
also looked up some images of what real stain glass looks like in Cathedrals. I
tried to explain what sunlight does to stained glass windows when it shines
through the glass. This was hard for her to understand, I could see that she
just was not getting it.
“Little fish” is normally very quick to catch
onto any concept that is explained to her, if you’re willing to answer a lot of
questionsJ So when she didn’t understand what I was telling her then showing her I realized
that viewing how light interacts with colored glass may be something you have
to experience for yourself to really get the full extent of what is involved.
Her lack of understanding this interaction of
light, color and glass made me feel sad.
There seems to be less stained glass used in buildings and I couldn’t think
of many places for her to go see this for herself. On top of that modern stained
glass is different than older stained glass because the materials used to
create them are different. Some of the materials used in creating colored glass
were toxic/poisonous and while I am glad this can be done more safely. The
glass created now is not the same pigments. Those pigments changes affect how
the light shines through them.
The other
dilemma with her wanting stain glass as a decoration is the expense. It is true
that we go as all out as we can on eight birthdays. However, making our dining
room window stained glass is out of our price range.
This problem boiled around in my brain for a
few weeks before a solution came to me. “Little
Fish” came home from a friend’s birthday party with a gift bag. The gift bag had tissue paper in it, not that
unusual. Then it hit me as I was folding
up the tissue paper to be set aside for reuse.
Tissue paper is very thin, so thin that a person can see through it when
they hold a single sheet up in front of their face and it comes in a variety of
colors. I could use the tissue paper to
imitate stain glass on our current windows.
So here is how I did it.
Step #1
I looked up
pictures of Arendelle Castle to try to find images of the stain glass which didn’t
yield any good results. So I thought about the song “Love is an open door” where
Anna and Hans are singing and dancing around. I paused the video when there was a good image
of the stained glass behind them then sketched out what it looked like on some
scrap paper.
Step#2
I went
through my tissue paper to select colors that were as close as I could get to
what the colors were like in the movie. In some cases I had to layer two
different colors on top of each other to get a close match.
Step#3
I
took scissors and clear tape and I started in the center of the stained glass
design and cut out one “stained glass square”. I taped it to the middle of our
window.
Step#4
I worked
my way out from the center. Making sure as I cut each stained glass piece that
if it had a mirrored piece of the same size and/or color on the design that I cut
them all out at the same time. This made getting them the same size easier and I
eye balled the placement to using the sketch as a reference. I could have measured to calculate it to make
sure it was exact however; real stained glass has some variation so I figured
this would make it more authentic.
Step#5
After all the “stained glass” was in place on the window. I took black electrical
tape and cover the seams the “pieces of glass” to imitate wrought iron. I made
the mistake of stretching some of the electoral take. If you choose to try this
please make sure you don’t stretch the electrical tape at all, not even a
little because it peels up and curls at the edges where it was stretched. If it is just laid on top and pressed down it
does not move.
After all
the electrical tape was down it was finished. It was late at night at this
point and I took some trash outside. When
I walked back towards the house I looked at the window and it looked really
neat. I think anyone who had seen stained glass before could tell what it was supposed
to be.
Even better still ”Little Fish” got to see
what it was like at night and in the morning when the light shined through the
tissue paper and it sent colored light onto the floor and table. She really enjoyed having the “stained glass”
Materials Cost
Tissue paper-
left over from previous birthday parties 0.00
Electrical
tape –almost had enough laying around
but I was two glass panes shy so I had to
get more 1.00
Clear tape-
already had it for home school- 0.00
Total Cost
1.00
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