#365birds MAY 2023

After surgery and my four-day hospital stay as memorialized in this post, I am in full swing with my personal drawing challenge, #365birds. Each day I randomly grab a bird's name from a jar, and that is the bird that I will draw that day. 

In this blog post, I share with you a handful of my favorites from the month of May. As always, above each drawing, I will not only include the name of the bird, but the area(s) of the world in which it can be found.

day #180. silver-eared mesia

southeast asia

day 183. brown cuckoo-dove

australia

day 190. javan trogon

western java

day 191. dalmatian pelican

southeastern europe to russia, india and china

day 192. burchell's coucal

sub-saharan africa

day 193. red-bellied woodpecker

north america

day 194. diard's trogon

brunei, indonesia, malaysia, singapore, thailand

day 196. schlegel's asity

madagascar

day 197. glossy ibis

east coast of united states

day 199. white-throated kingfisher

asia

day 201. masked trogon

south america

day 202. flame bowerbird

new guinea

day 203. green honeycreeper

southern mexico to trinidad

day 204. collard falconet

indian subcontinent and southeast asia

And, that's it for May. If you ever have any questions about my drawing challenge, my media, anything at all, please let me know!

If you would be interested in prints of any of my bird drawings, contact me. Please do not use or reprint any of my artwork without my express consent. Thank you.

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Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

- Salvador Dali -

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Winged

Smiles.

PAPER PUMPKIN SCRAP

Hey! It's still July! So I have just enough time to sneak in another Christmas in July card!

One of my many favorite aspects of the Paper Pumpkin kits is that so frequently there are such exquisite and useful scraps included in the kits. You know, the stuff most normal people throw away?!

Case in point: the lovely white piece on which my wreath is hanging. Would you throw that away? Of course not! Look how useful it is!

When I first laid eyes on this scrap, I saw it as a window-type and envisioned a wreath hanging on it.

I love the wreaths you can make from the Country Wreaths dies on page 163 of the Annual Catalog. Working with the little red/green edges, I grabbed red and green cardstock to set out to make a Christmas card with the dies.

The wreath turned out adorably, but it needed just a bit of a little something more. I took some basic pearls and used a Dark Real Red Stampin' Blend to color them.

Since the wreath portion only took up a limited amount of space on a 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" card, I dug through some of my ancient (wood-mounted) stamps, with this specific sentiment in mind. I knew it would fit perfectly in the remaining space.

Using Real Red ink for the sentiment on a 1" x 5 1/4" in strip of white cardstock was the perfect solution. Once again, I used the Stampin' Blend to color two more pearls, this time in a larger size, to flank the word "Christmas". 

While it looked fine at this stage, I still felt like something was still missing, a little something to make the card more complete.

Finally, I dug out my Real Red Stampin' Write Marker and added a plethora of dots around the sentiment as well as on the little triangles at the ends of the waste piece.Yes! That was just right!

Have you started making Holiday cards? How many cards do you plan on creating this year?

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Nature abhors waste. And so should we.
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth -

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Upcycled

Smiles.

WAXY WISHES

How do you feel about recycling/upcycling? I have a penchant for considering many things that others would throw out, possibly not even bothering to recycle it, to use "garbage" in my papercrafting.

What I'm speaking of specifically in this card, is the cool almost leathery looking background. Does it look masculine? I think it surely does!

If you order things online, often the packaging in these boxes is interesting, with the potential of being used in your creative projects, rather than being thrown away. Save a landfill!

Awhile back, I received an order and in the box was very thick waxy paper. I immediatly added it to my stash of possibilities. Coming across it again recently, I decided to use it for a background on a masculine birthday card.

I cut a usable size of the waxy paper and crumpled it into a ball in my hand. I flattened it out somewhat, then proceeded to do this a few more times, until it resembled leather after the final flattening. 

To coordinate with the look of my "leather" background and hoping to make it even more masculine-looking, I used brown cardstock for the card base, and all the other elements were die cut from a light woodgrain paper.

The final touch were two gold pearls dotting the "i's". 

Here you go, a tutorial on how to make this card, provided you are lucky enough to get a piece of this waxy paper -- or something similar -- in a box containing your order.

SUPPLIES:

Soft Suede cardstock (now retired, but you can use any brown)

Woodgrain Specialty Paper

Heavy tan waxed paper

Die Cutting/Embossing Machine

Birthday words dies

All That dies (page 162, Annual Catalog)

Stitched Rectangles dies 

Gold Pearls 

INSTRUCTIONS:

Fold a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" piece of brown cardstock in half, creasing it well with a bone folder.

Take a piece of heavy tan waxed paper that measures 3 3/4" x 4 1/2". Crush it up in your hands. Unfold it; crush again. Do this several times until, when you flatten it out, you have a very interesting leather-looking pattern. When you are pleased, set this aside.

Using rectangle dies, choose two: 3 1/2" x 4 1/2" and 3" x 4 1/4". From pale woodgrain paper, die cut first the larger rectangle. Then, place the smaller die inside the rectangle you just cut, and run it through your die cutting machine again. You will have formed a frame.

Take the flattened piece of waxed paper and adhere the frame to it. If any of the waxed paper protrudes beyond the edge of the frame, snip it off.

Adhere the completed frame to the card base.

From the same pale paper, die cut the birthday words.

Adhere the words to the waxed portion of the card so the tops of the word come about an inch down.

Die cut the decorative piece from the same paper. This is the die from the All That Dies that rersembles argyle. Add this to the bottom of the waxed part.

Add two gold gems to the "i" in both of the words.

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Recycling turns things into other things. 

Which is like MAGIC.

- Anonymous -

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Recycled

Smiles.

POLKA DOTS

Isn't this frog -- with his endearing pleading eyes -- just the cutest? When I discovered this stamp in the February 2023 Paper Pumpkin Kit, Sunshine & Smiles, I was immediately smitten. So I decided to make him the star of this card.

I wanted to capitalize on the circle aspect of his eyes, so added polka dots elsewhere on the card to echo this. We have his eyes, the spots on his skin, the polka dots on the Designer Series Paper, and then, of course, a smattering of sequins.

A closeup of all the polka dots:

Following is a quick tutorial on how to make a cute froggy card like mine.

SUPPLIES:

White cardstock

Granny Apple Green cardstock

Dotted Designer Series Paper

Frog stamp from February 2023 Paper Pumpkin Kit, Sunshine & Smiles

Memento Tuxedo Black Ink

Stampin' Blends in: Light and Dark Granny Apple Green and Light Daffodil Delight

Die Cutting/Embossing Machine

Painted Labels Dies

All That Dies (page 162, Annual Catalog)

Amazing Thanks dies

Pool Party sequins

Stampin' Dimensionals

DIRECTIONS:

Fold a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" piece of white cardstock in half, creasing it well with a bone folder.

To this card base, add a 4" x 5 1/4" piece of Granny Apple Green cardstock.

With even margins at the top and sides, add a 3 3/4" x 3" piece of dotted Designer Series Paper.

On a scrap of white cardstock, stamp the frog in Memento Tuxedo Black ink. Color him in as desired.

Using a scalloped circle die that measures 2" in diameter, cut out the frog. Add a few sequins around the frog.

Use the open circle die from the Painted Labels dies with Granny Apple Green cardstock. Adhere the frog piece to this. Using a couple Stampin' Dimensionals, add this to the center of the dotted paper.

From white cardstock, cut the large portion of the "thanks" and then cut the narrow portion of the word from Granny Apple Green cardstock. Adhere the two parts together and add the word to the green portion at the bottom of the card.

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Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs 

before you find your prince.
― Bianca Frazier -

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Froggy

Smiles.

SWEET PEAS

Omigosh,, I really really love to do projects like this one!

Occasionally, when I'm feeling sort of down and in need of some Creative Therapy, I get a hankering to do some coloring with my Stampiin' Blends. One of my favorite things to do when that happens, is to grab some of my black and white Designer Series Papers and go to work. 

For this card I used two different designs of DSP. A flower and a stripe with prominent black lines. The flowers -- which I call sweet peas, whether they really are or not -- appealed to me because when I was a little girl, my mom had sweet peas growing up a trellis, and I thought they were just the prettiest things ever. So, a little nostalgia here.

The Stampin' Blends I used were Light and Dark Rococo Rose and Light and Dark Granny Apple Green. I did my coloring quite loosely, not carefully at all. Which definitely is a departure for me. Very therapeutic also, I must say.

One thing that I should mention is something I learned when I was in college, working towards my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. I had a professor who was adamant about not centering things. He told me, they call it "dead center" for a reason. That is why I always place my focal points either above or below the center point. I feel the same way about dividing a space exactly in half. It just deadens the space. Thus, my left panel is a little wider than the right one. It just feels and reads much better.

Since black was so prominent in these papers, I used it in a few other areas of the card to make it more cohesive. 

Do you ever add color to black and white Designer Series Papers? Doesn't it make you feel so much better?

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Artists are just children who refused to put down their crayons.

- Al Hirschfeld -

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Sweet

Smiles.