My Latest Project from the Downtown Studio

A couple of years ago, I bought this frame at "Heart & Soul," a local store that carries some pretty fun stuff!  This frame was in a bin of damaged items....it looked pretty ragged,  but it did have a bird on it and you know how I am about them!  So,  I bought it for less than half price, took it home and there it has been for all this time.  You know how you INTEND to do something, but time just gets away?   Well, not too long ago, I took the frame to the downtown studio, thinking that would convince me to do something with it.  And, it did.  I had made some bird rubber stamps and wanted to do something with them...so, thinking I could accomplish two things at once, This bird collage just 'happened.'

I had to spend a bit of time getting the frame back into good shape...I lightly sanded it, then painted it with a bit of green paint...just to cover up all the dings and worn edges.  Then, I painted it with two or three coats of matte gel medium...just to give it a good finish.  We use painter's cloth as table covers in the studio and I tend to save all of them for one project or another, so the background for this collage is a piece of one of our used painter's cloths.  This piece is about five inches by seven inches.
I like all the reds and pinks and greens.  (Actually, I DID turn this piece over and use the other side of the one pictured here....and added a couple more colors, specifically, more red and green.)

I painted the tree, then stamped the birds on the branches.  They looked kinda sad until I put a little color on them....but before I could make sure they had wings, my daughter, Kelly, took a look and told me not to add another thing to the birds!  She's a minimalist and of course, you know, I will 'do something to death' if I'm not careful, so I took her advice and left the birds with just a touch of color.

Because I have lots of scrap paper around, I decided to cut the leaves from paper and sew them down with the antique sewing machine I keep down there.  I should say the 'seldom used' antique sewing machine.  I need to remedy that, for sure!  So, I just cut out some vague leaf shapes and sewed them to the canvas.  I did touch them up a bit with some oil pastels.  And, I felt there needed to be some kind of flower there...and a funky simple flower seemed a good idea.

There's some little musical notes there too.....well, the birds DO have a song!  I used a permanent pen for those.  

And, here you see the words I cut from old book pages.....touched them with a bit of that green paint, added a little bird nest with eggs from Hobby Lobby and it was done!  I like it.  Thought about keeping it at home....but, at this point, gosh, where would I put it....so right now, it's in the window at the studio downtown.  We are open this Saturday, as it is the second Saturday of the month...who knows, maybe someone will want to take some birds home!

So...what do you think?  It took me a couple of years to decide what to do with the frame...but I did finally decide on something.  One example, I suppose, of having things on hand when you do get an idea...and then, there's all that 'hoarding' of stuff until those ideas quit floating around in your head and actually land on something you've 'saved.' 

Hope you enjoyed the birds....now stay cool out there and take care....see you again soon.  pat