New Kitchen "Curtains"

This has been an idea in the making since 2017 when I came across a cute vintage wood cabinet 

at an antique mall featuring stenciled "curtains" on the glass doors:

I mean! 

💖

What a clever idea!  I snapped a full straight-on shot with my dinky camera phone and stashed the idea away.

I knew it would be a cute decorative feature to do to my kitchen window but making it happen was perplexing me.  And I'll be honest, I am sure other brighter folks could have figured this out far quicker and simpler than how I finally pulled this off.

Any time I do a craft project it has got to be cheap, dirt cheap.  I am fine with spending tons of time but not tons of money.  And this project was just that; took me a few years to figure out but in the end only cost a dollar.

So here is my fandangle process. The first thing I did was to print out the photo scaled to fit my windows on the wide format printer at the library.  As you can see the original stencil is missing paint so I then used a ruler to draw the lines and stencil sections back on the large print.  Next I used a xacto blade and cut out the stencil.  Now is where I got stumped.  Do I want to paint it on the window, or maybe even etch it, or try something else like vinyl?  Since I have to wipe down this window on a very regular basis I decided against the paint, thinking it would flake off as the original had done.  Etching is too permanent and really not opaque enough for the look I was going for.  So then I am left with the vinyl option.  I happened to have a big roll of white contact shelf liner I picked up from an estate sale for 1 buck!  I laid the cut out paper stencil (right side down to the back side of the vinyl backing) and traced out the pieces.  I did this to the back so I wouldn't have to later erase pencil marks from all of the fronts of the tiny strips.  I then traced out the pieces in pencil and cut out with the blade, scotch-taping the tiny pieces in place where cut.  After all cuts are made for both panels discard the paper templates. Clean the window with alcohol and allow to fully dry.  Next I taped the vinyl stencil to the window and painstakingly removed each tiny taped down piece, removed the backing and replaced on the glass in it's correct position. After all pieces were placed I removed the large stencil piece from the window.  I then used a bone folder tool (used in book making/binding to make sharp creases in paper) to firmly press each piece of vinyl to the window.  Then two days later Ta-da!

I super love it!  

I have already had to clean the window a couple of days after placing the vinyl and it held up well with gentle wiping.

My next kitchen project is possibly painting my countertops.  I eventually want new formica but that's way down the road.  For now I just want to make the blahness of these go away...however I have another year or so of overthinking the project before anything will happen!