This project is a hoot!

Happy Sunday!  We're on the verge of yet another busy week.  I've been a little overwhelmed lately (story of my life) with Spring photo sessions and just life in general.  But I don't want to fall behind with my blog too much so I thought a great way to start the new week would be to tell you all about the adorable hoots you previewed in my last post.

So tonight I'll share how you can turn this:

Into this:

There are so many ways to alter these adorable wooden owls.  I have covered them with patterned paper, fabric, used bottle caps for the eyes, etc.  The possibilities are endless.  So lets talk a little about how I cut these little birds out in my wood shop.  Kidding!  I actually bought the wooden owls at Michael's.  They also sell other bird cut outs and YES, the legs are included.  ;)  

Alright, so lets jump right into how I brought my feathered friends to life.  For the pink and teal birds:  paint the bird using an acrylic paint of choice.  I used Distress Paints by Ranger for these and didn't even require a brush, I just painted the entire owl with the dauber.  Once the paint dries, grab a stencil and some embossing paste.  I thought the stencil shown above would give a cool "feather like" effect to the my owls.  Place the stencil over the bird and apply embossing paste with a spreading tool.  (Helpful Hint No. 1:  Keep your stencil from moving by using a tiny glue dot to keep it in place.  Remove glue dot AFTER the embossing paste has dried.)   

Gently peel the stencil off of the wood and your bird now has some really awesome texture as seen above.  Allow paste to dry before proceeding with next step.  Imagine all of the stencils you could use on these babies.  You can visit my my mixed media pin board on Pinterest to view other birds I've decorated.    

And now for the fun part --giving the bird a personality!  For these little gals I simply added googly eyes, beaks made out of orange polymer clay and hearts made out of white polymer clay.  I painted the hearts using distress paints by Ranger and then stamped initials on them using acrylic alphabets.  Warning, the clay is very slick and the stamps will slip and slide --press gently, firmly, and quickly.  Yeah, good luck with that!  Haha.  The final touch for these little gals was the ribbon barrette at the top.  I actually bought those at Hobby Lobby and they were already put together.  I simply hot glued them in place.   

 

(click images to view larger)

Now lets talk about these little guys.  For these particular hoots I used Martha Stewart paints and crackle.  I applied the base coat --orange on the little guy on the left and a light blue on the little guy on the right.  I'm sorry I can't recall the official names of the colors.  Once the base coat dried --oh, you can apply two coats of paint if you'd like --anyway, once the base coat is dry, apply the clear crackle.  Allow crackle to dry completely.  Apply top coat in the color of your choice.  I used the color Wedding Cake on both of these because I just love, love, love that color.  The paint will immediately start to crackle.  Allow paint to dry and crackle.  (Helpful Hint No. 2:  Practice your crackling on small pieces of chipboard by doing all of the steps above.  Applying the crackle with different strokes or even brush vs. foam brush can give you a variety of crackle effects.)  For these owls I used a stencil with the word love on it.  Just like I did above, I secured the stencil with a tiny glue dot and then spread black embossing paste over it.  Gently peel off stencil and allow paste to dry before removing glue dot.  Lastly, add googly eyes, polymer clay beaks and hearts.  

Ms. Ruin's Supply List Gal Owls:

Basic Crafting Tools

Wooden Owl

Acrylic Paints or Distress Paints by Ranger

Embossing Paste

Stencil

Googly Eyes

Polymer Clay (orange and white)

Barrettes or Ribbon

Alphabet Stamps

Ms. Ruin's Supply List Guy Owls:

Basic Crafting Tools

Wooden Owl

Martha Stewart Acrylic Paints

Martha Stewart Clear Crackle

Embossing Paste

Stencil

Googly Eyes

Polymer Clay (orange and white)

I promise, these little gals and guys are as fun to make as they are to look at.  Stay tuned --I've got an altered paint brush, and a design team challenge project to share with you in my upcoming posts.  Until next time, I'll leave you with a preview:

Peace, love, and a hootin' good time!

Ms. Ruin

More birds!

Are you sick of all of my bird projects yet?  Well, I'm sorry.  But I'm just getting started!  I wanted nothing more than to sleep in today because I have a big day tomorrow (Sunday) and during the week I'm up pretty early.  But of course I was wide awake at 5:30am thinking of all of the projects I wanted to work on today because I declared it Craft Day.  So what did I make?  More bird projects!  In fact, I made two pieces of wall art and one table top piece that sits on a miniature easel.  

Project Number I:  Journey on the Wings of Faith!

 This is a 6"x6" in canvas.  I basically cut 1" squares and then glued them onto the canvas.  I then covered all of the squares with Mod Podge just to give it a good seal and keep the paper from tearing.  While that was drying I drew several ravens and cut them out to use as stencils.  I placed the stencil on the canvas and outlined it with black paint and then filled it with black paint.  I allowed it to dry and then took a wet paper towel and rubbed different parts of the bird to make it semi-transparent.

My last step was adding the words using stamps, paint, and alphabet stencils.  The words "wings of faith" are from the new art journaling set by Maya Road.  Didn't I say you needed that set of stamps?  :)  The heart was made with polymer clay.  This canvas sold the minute I posted it.  

Project Number II:  Hands are for shaking, not tying. 

This is a 6"x6" canvas.  I basically repeated the process with all of these pieces.  I did a lot more stamping on this one.  These words are from the song "Fell on Black Days" by Soundgarden.  This is probably one of my favorite lines ever.  The actual words are "So don't you lock up something that you wanted to see fly.  Hands are sharking, no, not tying."  Isn't that powerful?  Sometimes it's difficult to let someone go.  But if you truly love them, you want to see them soar, you want them to succeed.  And maybe they can't succeed with you...so why hold on?  Why tie their hands?  And why tie your own hands?  

I love this one so much I almost don't want to let it go.  But if it will inspire someone other than myself, then I want to see it fly!  

Project Number III:  Journey on the Wings of Faith! 

Here is another piece with the same message.  However, this is not canvas!  This is actually a 4.5" x 4.5" piece of wood.  This one will be sold with this cute little black easel so that it can be displayed on a table top , window sill, etc.  

This piece is .25" wide.  It's slender and small but still packs a punch of emotion and good feeling.  This project and project no. 2 will be available in my Etsy shop in the coming days.  Stay tuned!

I hope you enjoyed my projects.  I am really enjoying this surge of creativity!  Tomorrow I will get to explore my visual art --I haven't picked up my camera since December so I hope I'm not too rusty.  I will be working on an artistic shoot for Valentine's Day.  More details to come.  Until next time...peace, love, and wishing this day had more hours.