DIY Mizrach Sign + FREE Mizrach SVG & Template
Craft this super fun tissue paper stained glass DIY Mizrach sign to mark the direction of prayer in your home! When you’re done, try this fun Kotel art project too. This post contains affiliate links.
This year even more than any other year I’ve been wanting to do a project for the Nine Days, and Tish’ah B’av – days when we mourn the destruction of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem, and every tragedy that has befallen our people since.
To tell you the truth, I wanted to do something more unity-minded, but then, when scanning my personal craft idea list of things I wanted to try, this one popped out. I decided it’s worth giving it a go.
I used tissue paper to create a “Kotel” and cut the word “Mizrach from cardstock to turn it into a DIY Mizrach Sign. I made it using a picture frame with the backing removed, leaving only the glass, just like I did with my pomegranate DIY sukkah decorations.
I created this last minute with things I had handy (I didn’t even have time to let the Mod Podge fully dry before I had to stage the final images). There are definitely ways to do it better if you’re planning ahead a little more – and I’ll share that below. But first…
What is a Mizrach Sign?
When Jews pray, we face the location of our Holy Temple. Jews in Jerusalem face towards the Temple Mount. Jews everywhere else face more broadly towards Jerusalem.
For those of us living in the West, that means that we face East.
The longstanding tradition has been to mark the Eastern wall in the home with Jerusalem themed art, sometimes even marking it “Mizrach” – or East. This helps us remember which direction to pray towards, serves the practical purpose of letting visitors know which is the Eastern wall of the house, and also helps evoke Jerusalem when we pray that way.
Making a DIY Mizrach Sign for the home or the Sukkah
While I definitely had in mind the home when I made this, I do think it can be made for the Sukkah too!
Glass might be susceptible to shattering if it’s not fully secured in the Sukkah. You can replace the glass of the frame with acetate sheets and do the project with that instead. They are easy to cut with scissors.
I cut the words “Mizrach” from gold cardstock on my Cricut and offer the template as both an SVG for machine cutting and a PDF for hand cutting. You can trace and cut from cardstock, or even use it as a stencil and paint in the letters using glass paint.
I do recommend making the letters darker than I did (maybe even black) as it’ll be sharper and stand out more, however, I didn’t have time to go back and redo it once I saw that the gold didn’t stand out as much as I’d like.
I did not have different tones of brown tissue paper to work with – that IS what I would recommend, rather than sticking to one beige one. I was hoping that the light shining through would highlight where it overlaps a little more, but my beige was a special coated thick beige that isn’t as translucent as normal tissue paper.
If purchasing supplies special for this project, get regular thin tissue paper, and aim for a little color variation. It does have some definition but is more abstractly the Kotel the way I did it.
To help bring out the different stones, I did afterward go back and add some detail with a brown sharpie, and I think it does look better, although we’re missing the all tissue paper factor.
So while I am quite happy with how my DIY Mizrach sign came out – I think you can make it even nicer!
How to make a tissue paper stained glass DIY Mizrach sign
Supplies Needed
- An 8×10 picture frame
- Matte Mod Podge
- A foam brush
- Tissue paper sheets in shades of beige/tan and green (you can purchase pre-made squares but I intentionally didn’t want perfect squares for this.)
- Scissors
- Cardstock (I used gold, I recommend something with more contrast to your tissue paper)
- Pencil for tracing
- OR if Cricut cutting – any Cricut machine with a fine point blade and LightGrip mat + brayer
- Template/SVG – download at the end of this post
Process
1. Remove the back of the frame, then carefully remove the glass. The edges may be a little sharp.
2. Cut out your words “Mizrach” from your choice of paper.
3. Lay out your words on your glass face down. One by one, pick u pa letter, apply mod podge to the front, and place it back face down.
Do this with all your “Mizrach” letters.
Note: if you want to use a guide, just print a mirrored version of the PDF template and place it underneath the glass to use as a template for placing your letters. You should be able to even place a non-mirrored one printed on regular copy paper upside down, I think you’d be able to see through it.
4. Cut your pieces of tissue paper. Cut some slightly larger, some medium, some smaller. Cut rough rectangles. Cut some rough small circles from green tissue paper as well. (The amount that I cut is enough to make for quite a few projects).
5. Spread Mod Podge over your Mizrach and the back of your glass, leaving a roughly 1-1.5 inch border.
6. Place green circles at a few random spots and wrinkle it up a bit on the surface.
7. Star placing your large beige rectangles on the bottom, on the Mod Podge, not too organized. Overlap some more than others. Make sure to spread a little more Mod Podge in spots where you’re overlapping other tissue paper, including the green circles. You might want to keep a photo of the Kotel open for inspiration as you make your DIY Mizrach sign.
You can even place some bricks vertically instead of horizontally.
8. Work from bottom to top, largest on bottom, smallest on top, building up your Kotel. When you’re done, seal it with a thin layer of Mod Podge. Don’t overwork it or you’ll wet and lift up your tissue paper.
9. When you’re done, and the Mod Podge has dried, place your glass back into your frame, and flip over to view your gorgeous tissue paper Kotel art. Mine needed a bit more definition because I used a thicker tissue paper in only one shade.
11. If you’d like, roughly outline the stones of the Kotel on the back of your artwork. The tissue paper is translucent enough that it’ll show through.
And that is our final DIY Mizrach sign!
Download the free Mizrach SVG & PDF template
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