Earlier we posted a tip on dressing your model structure windows with realistic window blinds made from a simple strip of masking tape. But not every window in the neighborhood will have the same tastes and style. So we are going to show you another cool way to jazz up the window, again for the price of just a few pennies each.
Open windows or closed, draperies are an extremely common form of privacy for homes and businesses in any era for the last three or four centuries and likely longer than that. There are many easy ways to create draperies and one of the more popular ones is simply gluing a few strips of paper or colored paper to the back of them. That always looks pretty decent. With the age of the internet and computers and phones there is a endless supply of photographs of textures and patterns in every conceivable material to choose from. Simply all you have to do is google draperies, curtains, material, cloth, or material design in google images and then find your design, right click and save the image to your computer to use when needed. If the image is too big in scale, particularly with pattern fabrics, simply use paint or one of the thousands of image programs available to computers that will easily re-size the image file. These look pretty believable too. 
But do you want your model to be “pretty decent” or “pretty believable” or do you want them to pop!? In this model we built as you will see on the photos we left a few of our windows open, something that can be done on just about any window even if the window isn’t designed to be open. Improvising any structures windows to open is a matter of a few cuts with the hobby knife and a little thought and taking your time. In these open windows (and closed ones) we created realistic three dimensional draperies using ordinary tissue paper (like Kleenex or scotts, etc.) and we gave them some shape so they not only appear to have folds and rolls in them but literally do! A few of them we actually positioned the ends of them to come outside the window and naturally blow in the wind. And it was all very easy to do with minimal time.
Using tissue paper (the kind you blow your nose in) alone in its current form is too soft for what we need and hanging in front of a window looks like….well, tissue paper hanging in a window. Using pre-colored tissue also looks like smashed ass, so we painted ours with craft acrylic paints in colorful shades, blues, greens, salmon, etc. whatever your hearts desire actually (go less pastel or girly ‘no offense ladies’ on industry structures). We do this directly from the paint bottle without any water dilution. You don’t want to add too much wetness to tissue paper or it will actually just fall apart, tear, or become a balled up glob of wet slop. The paint is wet of course but not so wet that it ruins the composition of the tissue paper. So you don’t want to just slop it on super thick but instead keep it evenly and lightly spread out with feather light brush strokes.
Don’t even get the brilliant idea to air brush this stuff or use a rattle can, you will be chasing a painted tissue all over the paint room and it will cause a bigger mess that you could imagine. Just gentle painting with enough to just color it. Wait until it is completely dry and don’t over handle it, and then just carefully turn it over and paint the other side, gently. Think dry brushing but with slightly more paint and less to no pressure applied. You put on too much paint and you will never be able to shape this stuff later. This all may sound like a pain in the rear end but believe us it’s not. After the back is ry you should have a slightly soft painted tissue paper that is ready to cut the sizes you desire and apply. One sheet will likely do most of your windows, but we painted several sheets of different colors to show variety in each window of what would be tenement apartments above the IGA.
Now you can cut two strips, each half the width of the window with a little overhang on the outside edge, maybe 1/16 inch, and about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch longer than the window top to bottom. taper the bottom of each drape slightly to produce a parting gap like draperies have with your hobby knife or a sharp pair of scissors.
To attach them, run a thin bead of white or yellow glue above the window on the inside and then feed each drapery through the window from the outside wall and up to the top of the window and attach to the bead of glue, making sure to allow at least one or maybe both, according to what looks aesthetically pleasing to you, to hang outside the window. allow the glue to do its work for a few minutes forming a bond that will hold enough to allow you to begin shaping the curtains. Keep in mind now that the top is glued you can begin to bend soft folds vertically up and down the draperies more easily if you want to go for that look. For the portion hanging out the window, you will want to make it appear to be blowing with the wind. If not, why bother having them hang outside to begin with, just keep them in. 
But if you want that effect, you will need to shape them. To do that, just dab your fingertip into some white glue and softly and carefully apply it onto the curtains from the rear side and spreading it evenly over the lower half of the tissue paper. Again, be gentle. Now quickly wipe any excess glue from your fingers to avoid ungodly messy glue fingerprints on the front. Once clean, begin working the shape you wish to have and direction the imaginary wind will be blowing (be smart and try and have the direction the same for all windows) simply by manipulating each and making adjustments as the glue continues to dry from behind them. Once you booger up the first one or two it will come easily and you will want to do this with all your windows it just looks so cool. BUT DON’T! just pick random windows and even random buildings with this effect. Too many everywhere will look cheesy and silly. You want to draw attention to a few windows, a few structures… 
And it is as simple as that! I assure you that visitors to your layout will take notice and mention in a complements just how awesome that effect is. And that is the best reward ever in this hobby!
Hope it works out great for you and Happy Modeling campers!!
