Gothic Window- DIY

I have been rather bored with my room lately, and having no immediate projects I decided to spice it up a bit.  As I am in love with Gothic architecture, I decided to go with an antique theme, incorporating elements of Gothic architecture and medieval themes.  This will be the first of a few posts showing the improvements to my room.  I made this Gothic Window to put behind my head board, and it came out wonderfully.  It really works well with soft lighting I have.

For this project I used:

3 poster boards (22x28) (I wanted black, but the dollar store only had white :/)
Duct tape
Paint
Hot glue gun and sticks
Scissors
Measuring tape
5 Medium sized mirrors
Hammer
Thumb tacks

I looked up a few pictures of Gothic windows, decided upon one that I liked, and then took some measurements so I could translate the exact shape onto my poster boards.   With some easy ratio math, I figured out exactly how large my window should be.
 
I taped the three poster boards together using duct tape, two on bottom (so the bottom measured 44”) and then one on top of those two (like a triangle…of rectangles).  I measured out the length, which was 56”.  Plugging that into my ratio equation, I got the bottom width to be 32”.  

I had to use the sides that I cut off (the extra width) to add width to the top of the rectangle triangle.  Once I had the general shape cut out, I measured what the inside supporting pieces would be and then just measured them out onto the shape of the window.  


Because the Dollar Store only had white poster board and not black, I had to paint the entire thing.  Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, I ran out of black paint.  I was going to do the structure itself black, and the space where the mirror would go would be deep gray.  I ended up having to mix dark green and dark blue together to get a dark teal-ish color.  This actually created really nice contrast to the black, and, as luck would have it, turned out to match the shade of my current comforter…which was awesome.

 After the paint dried I began smashing mirrors…which was harder than I thought it would be.  Apparently it is easier to smash a mirror from the back than it is the front…very interesting.  Amidst tiptoeing around fragments of escaped pieces of mirror, and fervently hoping my cat wouldn’t want to lay on the table I was smashing on, or even worse eat a piece, it was rather fun :D  Vacuum cleaner was highly necessary though.  Mirror went everywhere.   Anyway…smashing mirrors = mess, you got it.  I hot glued the mirror fragments into the negative space of the window and hung it up on my wall using a plethora of thumb tacks.  

Et, Voila!  C’est magnifique, non?

As always, I would love to know what you think of the project, and if you have any questions or requests I would LOVE to hear from you!

À bientôt,