flights of fancy

As mentioned in my last post, yesterday I met up with Carole and Cherry, 2 fellow Copicaholics (thanks to Aimes for that little tongue-twister LOL).
We met up at Carole's house (which is the most AMAZING place, it should be gracing the pages of a glossy mag), and we had a lovely time messing about with her stuff. And believe me, this lady has a lot of stuff! She has a great craft room PACKED with goodies, and I've come home thinking I might 'need' a Cricut! I'm resisting impulsiveness at the moment though - I know, it's not like me at all!

I've been in an 'altering mood' and over the last couple of days, I've made an altered birdhouse for my friend, Julie. It's going to go in her garden, so I've tried to add embellies that will be somewhat weatherproof.

You should be able to click the images to get a close up of the paint job!
Sorry, this next bit goes on a bit!

I started out with various coats of acrylic and Sir Tim Holtz's Distress paint (Picket fence white), which gives fine crackles as it dries. (Although, to be honest, I wanted bigger cracks in the paint). Then I dry brushed more acrylic on in pink and blue, and rubbed on Sir Tim's Distress Ink. My friend Carole cut out some lovely swirls with her Cricut, and I used these as a mask and stippled Distress Ink over them. As they were nice and inky, these got decoupaged on.

The birdhouses are stamped images, (Basic Grey, porcelain range, also courtesy of Carole) cut out and decoupaged. The small birdies are hand drawn and also decoupaged on. Big birdies are Inkadinkadoo stamps (Birds Galore set), stamped in Adirondack Espresso Brown (not that succesful on the paint) and Brilliance Tiramasu pad (much better result). Bee stamp is also Inkadinkadoo. Aqua butterfly is a stamp by MSE, done on shrink plastic and moulded while still warm (ouch - burny fingers). Sprayed the whole thing with Moonglow Glitz Spritz, just for a bit of shimmer. Dandelion heads stamps by Lavinia, heat embossed in gold and Butterfly rub-ons by Basic Grey.

Then I had a good rummage in the embellies for things that will stand up to being outdoors. Buttons, synthetic fabric flowers, metal bits etc. I'm going to give it a final coat of varnish soon, and then I'll decide if it needs jewels. As I always say, ' if in doubt, add bling' LOL.