Life with Evie: Fun Homemade Window Stickies!

Over the last year I have accumulated quite a bit of dimensional fabric paint (which I will refer to hereafter as "puffy paint" - come on people, lets call a spade a spade). Almost all of it was hand me downs! Yay for free stuff! Some was from people who had gotten it for a specific craft and didn't want to keep it "just in case" and a big chunk was from my sis in law who had gotten it from her grandma who has been trying to purge her stash of sewing/craft stuff. I started out thinking I would use it for freezer stencil shirts, but I have hardly used any of it and the other day an idea just popped in my brain! It was actually something I did for the first time a long, long... long time ago when I was in high school. We had to carry around these little organizer notebooks for school that had our schedule, assignments and other stuff written in them. Well, they were laminated and so I used some of my momma's puffy paint (hey this was the early 90s) and drew some stuff on the cover. Fast forward to when it had dried and I found that it peeled off and would restick just the same. I had some more that I put on my mirror in my bedroom too.

So, I have not thought any more about them for 15 ish years and it was such a fun idea! I am also currently testing one of the ones I made on the painted wall in a bathroom that I want to repaint anyways. Just in case. They stick to walls great too, like those vinyl wall appliques, but I don't know if they would yuck them up in any way. I did seek D's paint expertise to see what he thought and he said his main concern would be if the paint was loose or peeling on the wall they could peel that off, but if that's not a concern then he didn't think it would stain or leave any sort of residue. Nevertheless I am doing a test case :) UPDATE: after only a couple of hours on the paint wall, the owl had REALLY adhered and was very difficult to remove. It also had tiny specs of the wall paint on it. So, I guess that is not a good option :( oh, well. I will let you know if I come up with any more ideas on that front.

Okay, on to the how-to part of this. Really its pretty simple so let me know if you have any questions that I didn't cover.

Supplies List:

~ puffy paint in desired color(s)
~ non porous surface to paint on (I used an 8x10 picture frame from the dollar store - this worked great for printing text to trace), you could do this directly on a mirror or window just make sure its clean first
~ tissue or rag to wipe the tip of your paint bottle
~ scrap paper to do a test "squiggle" on so you don't start writing/drawing with the clear liquid that separates out or a big clot

Once you have all of your supplies lined up, get started! As you will see in the pics of the owls, I used a layering technique with the different colors and to give it some depth but you could also do a color by number approach that would be like you were coloring a picture in a coloring book. This is something I am going to try for my next window stickers because then they would look good from both sides. Also, make sure that you make it thick enough so that when dry it doesn't tear easily.

layer one - a bit bumpy but its the first one - I've wondered if there would be some way you could "iron" these to press them smoother

after about 2 hours of dry time - you just want the surface to be set so it doesn't mix with the new color, so you could probably do more like 30 minutes but I wanted to be safe

finished and waiting to completely dry - I just followed the bottle directions of waiting 24 hours after I finished it before peeling off the glass
*to peel off the paint surface, I used my fingernail, but you can use a razorblade or other thin object to slide between the paint and the surface, then just gently pull up at an angle across the sticker (ex: I started with the owl's ear and pulled towards myself, not straight up)