Use Your Wings

Hello everyone!

It's time for a new challenge at A Vintage Journey, and I'm so glad to be back on board after a slight rest stop.

Our host this month is the lovely Anne (a.k.a. Redanne), and she's looking for Things With Wings.  If you hop over to A Vintage Journey you'll find lots of inspiration from my fabulous team mates, and here's my offering for you.

From the moment I saw this Silhouette Bird die I fell in love with it, but I managed to resist for a while before finally giving in.

Things With Wings gave me the perfect excuse to play with him for the first time.
















I glued some leftover strips of text paper onto one of the burlap canvases and gave the whole thing a rough coat of gesso.














Then I used one of my favourite layering stencils to add texture paste and - once that was dry - some inky colour (Walnut Stain and Gathered Twigs if memory serves).












I used a pastel pencil and some Hickory Smoke Distress Stain to add shading and depth around the paper strips and word stickers.














Time for the bird. I cut him from a piece of Tim's paper stash (I think it's from Wallflower, but I'm not sure), and then realised that I needed him to be a bit more durable.

I should have stuck him on some card first.  No matter... I cut the card, lined the two die-cuts up very carefully, and glued them together.










I gave him a very light wash of gesso too, sanded the edges and inked them with Gathered Twigs and Walnut Stain.











My main aim was to get the bird perched on a real piece of wood.  This is a piece of driftwood, so not really a branch, but I still like the effect.













An old ink blending pad turned out to be just the right depth to get the bird to sit up enough to rest his feet on the branch.

As always, I let some of the decoration fall over the edges of the canvas.












The words leapt out at me from the Small Talk stickers... once stuck down, I used a pastel pencil to shade around them.










It took me forever to decide what other embellishment it needed beyond the flowers and words.  I played with all sorts of combinations, as well as extra tissue tape and all sorts.














But in the end I took it all off again, and kept the whole thing very simple with just this alcohol ink and gesso-altered Idea-ology bird, flying in the distance.








I hope you like him, and I hope you'll head over to A Vintage Journey to see some more Things With Wings to inspire you to travel with us this month.  See you there!

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Gustave Flaubert

Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?
Frida Kahlo

And what a happy coincidence... I'd like to add this to the Things With Wings challenge at Frilly and Funkie.  I suspect I won't be the only one doing the double!