Second on the 2nd: Birds

 

As most of you know, whenever possible, I like my Second Look to somehow reflect what our current host at Art Journal Journey is featuring.  That means I had to look for something that reflected Birds as requested by Mia of Craftartista. 

Back in 2016, I was in an international swap with five other artists.  Each had their own theme.  Valarie Tups from Germany, who no longer posts to her blog, requested birds.

   This is the first page.  The bird legs are pen nibs.

This is page 2, the back side of the previous entry.

I started with images from a bird book and turned them into transparencies using packing tape.  I backed the transparencies with words taken from a Thesaurus. 

I even did a bit of stamping.  The egg on the left was a gift from Linda at heARTfully Inspired.

I used pan pastels on the background and gold pigment ink on black card stock for the stamped feathers.

This is page 3.  Valerie likes words on her pages, so I tried to oblige.

I combined three colors of pan pastels, then sprayed them with fixative, which darkened the background more than I anticipated.  I stamped to the left of "Field Notes," and added the names of the birds that are shown on Side 4.

More stamping.  I was surprised that the birds slid around on the background.  I thought it might be because of the fixative I used.   The bird stamps shown on this page were gifted me by Chris at Pear Shaped Crafting, another participant in this swap.

After I mailed the package, I worried that the feathers I used in this spread might be rejected by customs.  I know it's illegal to send them to Australia.

Words on the page.  Somehow I have trouble with that, but forced myself to fit words on most pages I created for Valerie.

This is page 4 and the Audubon accordion booklet I created contains pictures of each of the birds listed on the reverse side.

This is one side of the accordion fold

and this is the other side and the front.  I colored the cards using my handmade shimmering mists.  Please note that Valerie's photos are much better than my scans.

The booklet is held together using velcro.  The book can be accessed from either side by pulling on the glass squares.

The bird image was also gifted me by Linda.  Another real feather tied the pages together.

This is page 5.  I had some really lovely and rather expensive folded wrapping paper that I wanted to use for the background.  The folds had caused creases in the wrapping paper, so instead of trying to cut it exactly to size (I'm not very good at exact when it comes to paper), I simply folded it over card stock at the fold and used the same background for both page 5 and page 6.  After reading Valerie's blog today, I see this page held special meaning to her.

I tried for a bit of humor here, since I borrowed my friend Kathy's dies for this project. 

The cat was one Kathy had given me earlier, so I added some rub-n-buff to the cat to make it a bit different color from the cage.

This is page 6, and you can see I continued the wrapping paper background here.

It's impossible to tell, but this peacock is very dimensional.  There are several layers to it, but they simply don't show up on the scan.

Again, Valerie loves words, and this reads "Shake your tail feathers," although it's rather difficult to read because of the transparent letters.

This is page 7, and surely you knew I would include a bit of my wonky sewing.

The back layer is some of my hand dyed silk, the transparent eggs were also from Linda.  The "branch" is a stirrer stick I dyed using a furniture touch-up pen.  Dyed cheesecloth became the "nest."

I found the white die cut bird in my stash.  I colored it using Staz-on and alcohol.  My feeble attempt at stamping was hit and miss on the page.

I received permission from Valerie to show the completed tag and here it is in the pocket, something I forgot to scan.  This photo is from Valerie's blog, so please don't pin it without her permission.

This is page 8 and also the last page I created.

I had these beautiful birds in my stash that I had printed out when I had color ink in my printer, and simply had to use them.  The die cut cat was another that had been given me by my friend Kathy and was meant to tie the pages together.

I fear I could have done a better job on this page, because it is really lacking in something.

This is the front of the tag I created  for Valerie.  Our tags take the place of sign-in pages in altered books.

This is the back before I added my personal information.  The die cut oval was a gift, and the "brads" were stickles.  I used the ONE die I owned at the time to create the tag that I colored using Staz-on and alcohol.

Here is a portion of the competed tag with fibers and three silver feathers attached.

Thanks ever so much for visiting today.  I hope you enjoyed the swap pages I made for Valerie, whose theme is birds.

______________________________________________________________

Now it's time to share your own Second on the 2nd.  The rules are quite simple and everyone is welcome to join the fun look back.  All you have to do is bring back a post that you are especially proud of, or perhaps one you shared before anyone knew your blog existed.  It could even be one that holds special meaning.  Any post, any genre, any artistic endeavor is acceptable, as long as it's been published sometime in the past.  Then link below (direct links only, please) and Bleubeard and I, along with other Second on the 2nd friends, will be by to visit.  This link will be good until Monday May 4 at 4:00 p.m. my time.