(Click on any photo to view a larger image.)
I've been on a bit of a birdhouse fad lately.
In my last post, I wrote about a birthday card I made with an image of a birdhouse on it. Here I'm featuring some wooden birdhouses that I have painted and embellished to use as home decor in my mountain house.
It seems as if I've been seeing birdhouses all over the place. Well, actually I've always seen them but never paid much attention until recently. The birdhouse motif is a frequent sight on the back roads of upstate New York where they decorate mailboxes, front doors and wreaths. I suppose the allure of country living has given me the birdhouse bug.
Here are photos of the birdhouses I have done to date. The blue and green ones in the center photo were painted last year. (Then they just sat on a shelf in my craft room overlooking my work table, whispering that they wanted some company.) The larger of the two is decorated with paper die cuts that were featured in
Part II and
Part III of my most popular post, the
Cuttlebug Filigree Medallion tutorial, By combining the negative cutout pieces, I created the design on the front and back of this birdhouse. On the sides are the pieces from which the negative spaces were cut. The smaller birdhouse is actually made in 1:1 scale for miniature dollhouses. You can get an idea how small it is by comparing it with the size of the dime in front of it. This house was a little to small to embellish with paint or paper cutouts so I used nail art decals instead. They worked like a charm
The black and red birdhouse at the top also features die cut designs from the very same Cuttlebug die as the blue-mint green house. Here only the tiniest of the cut outs were used to create the black design under the tiny red hearts. The hearts themselves were left over from a project I made for
my sister and brother in law's 30th anniversary surprise.
The yellow and green house at bottom is not to be outdone. It also sports decorative die cut flowers with rhinestone centers resting on a delicate vine twining around the outside of the house. The flowers were burnished slightly to cup the petals so they would pop up and have some depth. All of the birdhouses were painted with acrylic paints and sealed with Mod Podge before and after painting.
I still have one more wooden birdhouse on my craft table. I don't know what I'll do with that yet but I'll be sure to show it to you when it's done. Until then, keep crafting!
Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva
By the time I got to the back of the bookcase, I was anxious to move on to another project so I opted not to paint it. Instead I covered over it with three pieces of white wrapping paper in the spaces corresponding to the shelf openings. Then I used a fun stencil from The Crafter's Workshop, TWC97 - Swirly vines. I wanted a coordinated look but not cookie cutter sameness so I chose to color the flower elements in each panel in a different color palette. When the back was replaced on the bookcase, I was pleasantly surprised to see it looked even better than I imagined it would. Next up is to make some low trays/containers for each shelf to hold miscellaneous items. I think I'll make each tray in a solid color to echo the background and low enough to allow the design on the back to show through.
