"Frosted" Privacy Window

We have small sidelight windows on either side of our front door.  

(This is an old picture...I have since painted the door black to match the shutters on our house.  

See here.)

And here's how it looks from the inside.  

There wasn't much privacy with nothing covering the windows.  And between neighbor children peering in to see if we were home (Ryan loves that!) and trying to hide from door to door salesman, we wanted some privacy.  

Awhile back I tried to hang curtains like these on the windows.

image

But I had to hang the curtains with magnetic curtain rods because there is no room to add a tension rod.  That just meant that the kids pulled them down everytime they wanted to see who was at the door.  So I returned the sheer curtains and magnetic curtain rods and was back at square one.  

And then....{enter pinterest} I found a great (and cheap-o!) solution.  I found out that you can make your own privacy film type window covering from CONTACT PAPER!  

(Similar to this, but about 1/5 the price tag.)    

(Idea found here.  Thanks Greg and Ashley!)   

I reduced the size of the stencil they posted on their blog because my windows are smaller.  

Then I traced and cut and traced and cut. 

(This reminded me of the felt leaf garland I made.)

I did most of my cutting out in the school parking lot waiting for my kindergartener.     

And here's my progress after finishing the one side.

And the view from outside at night.

I like the pattern and the privacy.

PS - Even though it looks frosted, this is just regular old contact paper.  

Linking with these parties.

betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com

todayscreativeblog.net