Fig. 2.
A very pretty and cheap imitation of stained glass can be made by any one possessing a little ingenuity, a pair of scissors, a few sheets of colored tissue-paper, and a paste-pot, and the humblest cottage window can be made resplendent as those of a cathedral—more or less.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 4.
Take a sheet of white or yellow tissue-paper of the exact size of your window-pane, and with some very fine boiled paste paste it thereon. When this is dry, take two sheets of another color, and fold them; then cut from these folded sheets a form like Fig. 1. You will now, on opening them, have two shields, as in Fig. 2. Now paste one of these shields in the centre of your yellow window-pane. When this is perfectly dry, paste the second shield over the first, only a little to one side and lower down, as represented in Fig. 3, and you will have an effect much resembling stained glass. If you choose you can cut out some design from a fourth sheet to resemble a crest—say, the head of a lion—and paste that in the centre of the shield; this should be of some other colored paper. Or, to produce another effect, you may, after first neatly outlining the design with a pencil, cut and scrape away all the paper within the limits of the design with a sharp-pointed knife, so as to leave the plain glass, which will have a very pretty effect, particularly if you shade the design on the edges with Indian ink. Or, again, you may fill in this space with some bright contrasting color; say, red on blue, or blue on red.
Of course, in decorating your window, it will be desirable to have a different design on every pane, or at least a great variety. To obtain another and more elaborate form it is only necessary to fold your two sheets of tissue-paper twice, and then cut out, say, a figure like Fig. 4, when, on unfolding it, you will have two patterns like Fig. 5, which will, when pasted over each other, produce a rich effect.
