Bird Brained

This month Lynne at the Altered Element sent a stamping surfaces pack. Included in it were these cute little bird stamps...




... and loads of different things to stamp on including grunge board, canvases, stamp board, shrink plastic, metal, Tyvek and fusible film.

Now I don't know if it is the hot weather or an overdose of Springwatch but I've been totally bird brained this month. The first thing I did on receiving all these goodies - including lime green fusible film - was to paint a sheet of felt with Lumiere paint in purple and add even more sparkle with mica sprays. I seem to be having a very purple and sparkly phase at the moment. If it isn't the heat maybe its my age?

Anyway I do like bright colours and I'd been knitting with some copper wire from last months pack - just to see if I could really - which resulted in a messy net that just needed a purple background. (For neat, beaded wire knitting with proper shape check out Beth's blog.)

Then, with the bird stamps and thoughts of netting birds to ring them in mind - Springwatch on the brain - I set about using as many bird stamps as possible on as many of the surfaces supplied as possible. Despite my best efforts I haven't managed to incorporate them all. I really ought to plan a bit more but the novelty of experimenting with things gets the better of me, often. So I made lots of patches and charms featuring birds which I incorporated into a sort of wall hanging.

The patches down each side are made in three ways.

One set are stamped with Brilliance Ink onto Tyvek sprayed first with mica spray. The squares I used weren't heat treated. Maybe I'll post the "bloopers" that resulted from heating it later -enough said!

Another were stamped on tea dyed fabric to which I added extra colour and bling with mica spray. The stamping was with StaZon.

The third set were stamped onto shrink plastic which had been painted with watered down Lumiere paint. When shrunk this has a wonderful deep colour and interesting texture.

The charms were also created in a variety of ways too. I painted a sheet of grungeboard with the pearlescent Eco Green acrylic paint from last months pack. Once dry I stamped with StaZon and cut out the birds.

Another set were stamped onto fusible film using a Karantha unmounted stamp. More bloopers here before I got the ironing right and fused the layers on the stamping without frazzling the lot.
I coloured metal with Alcohol Inks and stamped with Brilliance ink. I stuck the metal to card to reduce kinking and cut out the chickens.

I also used a laser cut bird shape - like a Twidleybitz but from old stash - painted with Lumiere paint and overstamped with Brilliance.

You can see in the close up shots that the film shapes had holes reinforced with eyelets and all the charms are fastened to the wire net with loops of thread.

I also made ten inchies for a swap, again based on painted felt. The flowers are die cut from shrink plastic, stamped with random patterns before shrinking.

The flowers can be shaped before they cool and I fastened them with stitches and beads in the centre.