Fun with birds...

Do you love birds? I've seen them every.where this last year, in crafts, in home decor and fashion. We all love nature shapes I think. This is a little tutorial on how to stretch your craft products to work more for you and an idea on a finish for them. If you are into paper crafting, you probably have several punches or have purchased those adorable little chipboard shapes of birds, butterflies, flowers and such. If you haven't it may be because you aren't sure how to finish them.

In this case I started with this cute new punch I bought from Stampin Up. Love, love, love all of their products. I wanted to use the little bird shape, so I punched him (or her) out first. Then I sat the shape down on Grungepaper, a Tim Holz product. It's so versatile because it has the strength of chipboard, but is very flexible like paper.

As you can see, I traced out the shape a little bigger than the original. This is how I expand the use of the punch. Now, the one I made is not quite the same, but that's part of the fun. If you have a hard time doing this free-hand, this is a great alternative.

Then, I painted my little bird with some pink paint, and added some distress crackle paint over top. You can add some more distress ink over this, but I wanted mine to be a little cleaner. Then a little pearl for an eye.

Here are two of the little guys when finished. You'll notice the blue one is a little "fatter" than the other. That's the variety you get when using some freehand tracing. You can add fun little items for the wings too. Now imagine these on a card, or scrapbook page accent.....yummy.