Birdhouse with a difference

Hi it's Holly here with my newest project for Crafters Cupboard.

This is a beautiful birdhouse with painted metal flowers and embellishments that has been decorated with book pages.  I used the following products:

Kaisercraft birdhouse

A yellowing book

Paper artsy fresco chalk paint pumpkin soup

Treasure gold in onyxite, emerald, ruby, royal amethyst and florentine

Prima, cinnabar vintage trinkets small and large metal flowers

Metal beading, additional metal flowers, metal owl and leaf charms

Small wooden plaque and a few brads.

A brown distress ink like frayed burlap

I started by putting the birdhouse together using PVA glue - the trick is to use elastic bands to hold the item together while drying!

I then painted the whole house in white gesso and then anywhere I thought might me seen with the fresco chalk paint.

I then ripped into small pieces my book pages making sure there weren't large pieces of blank paper. I used PVA glue to glue all the pieces down all round the walls of the house

Once all the walls were covered I let it dry overnight and started the roof. The bottom of each side is a squarish piece of book paper but each row after that is handcut and the edges inked with distress ink to look like a strip of tiles. Using the same method as with the walls I used PVA to glue the strip down making sure I left the edges of the tiles without glue so I could bend them up a little.

Once the roof was complete and dry I used the distress ink to make the walls and roof appear old and a little more rugged.

I then started to decorate the front of the birdhouse. I gathered a collection of metal flowers and charms together and worked on the placement for the front of the house. I absolutely love the new Prima Finnabair vintage trinkets range and couldn't wait to use them and adjust the colour using the treasure gold colours.

I took each charm in turn and painted using the treasure gold with a paintbrush. I used many colours on each flower and painted the colours on with the same brush not worrying too much about cleaning in between. I used the purple colour of royal amethyst to make the owl stand out. I glued all the charms and beading down once painted using helmer 450 glue.

This is a lovely project which was really fun to do. It would be perfect as a gift for so done who loves the garden, birds or a little vintage bling!

Bye for now

Holly