While we had our retail store I had a lot of fun coming up with display ideas for our windows. They were particularlly challenging because they were big and long. The windows wrapped around the store, without much space for creating traditional displays. So I thought I would start sharing some of the ideas I came up with. They are all simple, and use inexpensive and recycled materials. And can be adapted for most any season or space, even at home.

Here is the first one I would like to share. It was a project I designed for a fall window display, I wanted to stay away from the typical leaves and pumpkins. Not because I don’t like the typical fall symbols (it is my favorite time of year), but because I had to cover so much space I needed something that wasn’t going to take me forever to put up, or cost me an arm and leg. I love going back to childhood projects, and I remembered making “stained glass windows” from tissue paper and black construction paper. I took that idea and made it bigger.

For my materials. I used brown butcher paper, and fade proof tissue paper. I wanted them to fill the window space so I cut the butcher paper to fit the height of the window, I cut two pieces for each panel. The next thing I did was to lay the two pieces of paper on top of one another and secure to my surface with low tack masking tape. That way the big pieces of paper wouldn’t move around while I was cutting. Then I started laying out my design, I went with a random pattern using the width of a yard stick to measure out my borders.

After I had the design cut out, I lifted off the top layer, then started gluing the tissue paper down. After the tissue was glued down I placed the top piece back on, being careful to line it up correctly. Then I used double sided tape to secure the top to the bottom.

These windows turned out to be one of my favorite, and were so simple and fun to create. I’m glad to share them!