Put A Bird On It!

There is a joke in the crafting world that says, if you're unsure what to do with an piece of art, put a bird on it.  I took that advice to heart on Sunday when I was making some cards using gelatos and embossing, inspired by the class I took at Bizzy B last week (as described in yesterday's post), and needed to do a little improvising!

I started by using each of these two stamps for embossing - a Positive Thoughts stamp and the Hero Arts "Leafy Vines" stamp:

They are both large stamps and it is sometimes difficult to get a clear image, as was the case with my first attempt, so I ended up using both stamps on the same piece of watercolour paper. I embossed with the Stampendous "Aged Rose" embossing enamel, which gives a lovely vintage look.

The result was pretty good, I really liked how you could see a few words peeking out from behind the vines (might try to recreate that effect again in future!), except for a little bit of a blank spot on the bottom. So what did I do? I put a bird on it!  A Dina Wakely Scribbly Bird, to be exact, one that I had stamped and then painted with watercolour.

As you can see in the next picture, the stamped image turned out really badly, leaving a huge gaping hole in the centre.

No worries, I went ahead with the embossing, coloured the paper with pink and red gelatos and positioned the bird right smack in the centre of the card to cover up the blank spot.  Easy fix!

For this next card, I used a piece of white cardstock and ended up holding the heat gun a little too close to the paper, leaving one section looking a little "toasted".

To fix it, I blended Antique Linen Distress Ink on the card, then added a little Broken China as well, before adding - you guessed it! - another painted bird!

The morale of this story? Don't be afraid to make mistakes.  If there is one thing I've learned from art journaling, it is that any mistake can be fixed, you just have to keep going. You can cover it up with paint, glue something on top of it, cut it out, fold it up or ... just put a bird on it!