A Flock of Birds, and One Rose

I'm working on a couple of big projects right now, one for a commission, another for an upcoming art show. In between those large, slow projects, though, I enjoy making things I can finish in an hour. Done and done. The perfect size for a mini project is 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", the proportions of projects known as ATCs (Artist's Trading Cards), the same proportions as baseball cards, Star Trek cards, etc., and also the wallet size on my printer/scanner. So I came up with my little bird cards after I made one as an experiment and decided I liked it.

This was the first one, and here's how it came to be.

 This is a painting a did last year that is now owned by a friend (Hi, Melinda!)

I then scanned it into the computer and cropped it down to one bird:

Then I bought some of this stuff:

I printed wallet sized multiple images of the sparrow onto the sheer fabric, then cut the images apart. Then I selected various fabrics and laid (egg pun there) the sheer bird images over each fabric to see the effect. Some fabrics were too busy and obscured the bird, while others showed just enough pattern to be an interesting accent:

 This one is a bit busy.

 This one works better.

 After that I made a quilt sandwich and stitched the bird to the backing with various colours of thread, although I found the malty brown shade worked best for outlining the bird body.

I came back and hand embroidered more stitches for interesting detail, with black for beaks, eyes, and legs, and gold thread around the sun, then I machine zig zag stitched around the edges before brushing all edges with copper metallic paint (I use Golden acrylics) to keep the edges from fraying. And here are some of the results:

I'm also trying it with an owl sketch I did.

 Not finished yet. Also, I need a manicure......:-)

And if you want to try this project but feel you don't have artistic abilities, I say, bah! But here's a quicker way. Find a copyright free image online, like this emerald wing dove, then use your Corel or Photoshop elements and turn it into art. In this case I used a watercolour effect on the photo then slightly "posterized" it. Now it is ready to print and play with.

You can also use the same effect with a personal photo. I took a photo of some roses Glenn gave me, cropped it down to a solitary rosebud, erased out the background flowers, then used my Corel Paint/Draw  watercolour effect to create a little 'painting' ready to print and play with.

 Presto! Technology is just another tool in the crayon box.

You can also see some of the birds on my Etsy site at the top of the blog page (another shameless plug).