Thursday, November 17, 2011

And Now For Something Different - Crafty Birds

8x10 inches, cut paper

Let me get this off my chest first.  I am not so much of a Christmas person. 

Actually I like some of the aspects of the season (that's what it is, because it certainly isn't a single day any more).  I like bright twinkly lights at night.  I like cookies and eggnog.  I enjoy hearing from friends and family. All good.

What I don't enjoy is mainly the economic push at this time of year, the emphasis on buying stuff, supporting the local economy by opening the wallet. I know the economy is in rough shape, but let me think about what I am thankful for for a minute, eh?  So I try to celebrate without becoming a raging consumer.

Anyway, I decided to try my hand at designing a card for this year, and my inspiration came from an article in an older Somerset Studio magazine that I found at the library.  The idea was to design birds using mostly circles cut from paper.  I decided to see what I could do, since I have bags and bags of various papers I've squirreled away, including an old book of wallpaper samples.  Did you know that paint stores will sometimes give the books away for free when they are about to be out of date? The only things I purchased for this effort were some tiny metallic brads, which are used for the bird's eye, and some  snowflakes stickers. The results appealed to my husband, which is good.  I still have to see if this size will work for cards when copied and duplicated, and I still need a greeting of some sort. 

We shall see.

3 comments:

ann @ studiohyde said...

I'm with you on this one...Christmas is great, but the frenzy build up NO!
Do love your little festive bird though - at first I thought it was fabric (perhaps that's for another day eh!)..hope you manage to capture this into cards, it's always nice to give and receive something that has been personally made.

Ann said...

I agree with you about the Christmas commercialism, it is all way too much. But your bird is wonderful! It will make a delightful holiday card. I may borrow that idea for ours :-)

Sherry Pierce Thurner said...

I actually am having the design made up as little cards. Inside it will say, "Let heaven and nature sing!"