Birds of a feather...or silhouette ;)

It's tutorial time again! 

Today I wanted to share how to make some fun mod art for those with bare walls and low budgets! Or just a bird fetish. :) The finished product will look like this:

Materials you will need: 

• Canvas, canvas board, poster board or even thick poster paper would work.
• Decoupage glue- I used Modge Podge
• Paint brush- for decoupage glue
• Scissors- for trimming 
• Black permanent marker
• Old book or papers that you don't mind tearing up 
• Ribbon (for hanging it up) 
• Printed bird pictures (see pictures posted later in tutorial) unless you'd like to free hand the birds like I did in the blue background picture.
• Any little final touch accessories you may want, i.e. buttons

Step 1- Tear up some of the paper you'll be using and get the decoupage glue ready to stick the papers down to the base you've chosen to work with. You can choose to align the page edges with your base like I did in the two piece bird art picture, or you can lay your pages randomly to get a more scattered effect and then trim around the edges like I did in the three piece blue background pic.
Step 2- Once you have your pages glued down, decoupage over the entire surface- thick isn't necessary thin works great. Just make sure you get the whole surface leaving no blank spots because the marker will absorb and reflect funny in any bare spots. Let it dry completely.

While you're waiting for that to dry go print some birds! I just Googled "birds" under the images tab and got all I needed by copying and pasting to a word document and then resizing them to fit my project.

Step 3- Cut out the birds excluding their feet- those are easier to draw on after you position them on their branches.
Step 4- Draw out the basic sketch of your tree branches starting in a corner and stretching out across the canvases leading from one to the other so it appears to be one branch broken between two or three (or however many) canvases. Don't worry about details yet, those are easiest to add last after the branches are all there and colored in.

Step 5- Color in all your branches and add more details. I added leaves in my three piece project, and left the branches bare in my two piece. So, once again, it's up to your own personal taste here.

Branches all filled in- no details yet

Already looks so cool when you separate the pieces!

 Step 6- Decoupage your birds into place where you want them on the branches, and then decoupage over the top of them as well so they have a uniform gloss to the branches. Let dry completely.

Step 7- Color over top of the birds with the marker making sure to get all the edges.

You're done! Sign it, you're an artist! Now you can hot glue some ribbon to the back for hanging them like I did, put them in frames, or add hanging embellishments to your fancy!
Hope you had as much fun making yours as I did mine!