I have a confession to make. I am a lover of light and all things that allow the light to shine through. Stained glass always captures my attention when it is illuminated, something about it just sings to my soul.

The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some product to create this project. The opinions I share are solely my own.

Have you ever been mesmerized by a stained glass window with the sun shining through it? I sure have. I find them absolutely fascinating, and I really wanted to see if I could attempt to recreate the look and feel of stained glass using stencils and mixed media supplies. In this post, you’ll find an outline of the four techniques that I played with in an attempt to make faux stained glass that feels like the light is shining through it.

To start, I used mixed media, watercolor weight paper and taped it to my work board using blue painter’s tape by 3M. I then sprinkled ColorSparx powders in multiple shades around the page using a fan brush, by tapping some powder onto the brush, then tapping the brush across the page. I used our Spritz Bottle to lightly spray over the sprinkled powders, activating them, and dried it with my heat gun.

Using a catalyst spatula by Princeton, I dragged some TCW9006 Gloss Gel Medium across the page to give the dried ColorSparx powders a glass-like finish and shine which I dried with my heat gun. Next, I taped stencil TCW883 Circle Jumble over the dried gloss gel page. I then applied TCW9009 Black Modeling Paste using the same catalyst spatula, and peeled off the stencil & washed it immediately (Never leave wet modeling paste on a stencil!). I used my heat gun to dry the modeling paste, and removed the painters tape from the edges of the page.

Voila! A stained glass like page results. Lastly, I die cut some black paper using a Sizzix die by Tim Holtz and cut the glossy painted page to cover the back of the cathedral window die cut. I used PVA glue to attach the die cut to the matching cut out from the faux stained glass page. Ta da! Here’s the completed cathedral window…

Next, I did a variation on this theme. Using a remnant cut off from an old collaged mixed-media project, I die cut another cathedral window shape and again backed it with the same gloss background page. I really love how this one looks like aged stone!

Lastly, to really challenge myself, I decided to try Ranger Adirondack Alcohol inks on acetate using the same stencil. I simply laid the stencil onto the acetate and dropped the alcohol inks over the stencil. This leaves a wonderful stencil impression of the outline of the stencil, but it also blends together in places to give it variety and subtlety. The great thing about using acetate is that it can be die cut, and light can actually shine through it. Here, I took some images using tiny lights to show you the effects of the finished acetate alcohol ink cathedral windows.

Do you want to see this blog post as a fly-by video (51 sec)? Hop on over to my YouTube Channel to watch it by clicking on this video link. I’d love to hear which one of these windows is your favorite and why, please leave us a comment, below!

Michaela Butterworth
The Crafter’s Workshop Design Team Member

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