Staying Nimble!

The pieces for the BIRDHOUSE NEIGHBORS

Laying in the hospital, there are moments of clarity. I got clearer beginning to plan for three new projects. However, so far not one of them has been created as I can't find the pieces I know are here but put who knows where. That was disappointing but lately I've learned to roll with the punches.

I am fascinated with the crackle finishes, mostly the ones you create with a base color, the crackle medium and the covering paint that allows the cracks to show through when the medium dries. Each one is an adventure. It takes practice to know when you will get the optimum crackle and I didn't do toobad.

I started with a birdhouse painted black. I was going to create a winter scene with each layer of distance crackled and painted a lighter color. I soon realized birdhouses were not "winter" so tried to think up another idea.

I had three small birdhouse Christmas ornaments and after cutting the cord had planned on putting them on the birdhouse sides after getting crackled and decorated. I needed 4, not three and stopped. Then I painted them, putting on the crackle medium and used several greens. Obviously this had morphed from one project to two.

Creating a design over the crackle

I found some dowels, drilled holes in the ornaments and found a base to put them on with "feet" to elevate the wood slab.

My goodness, this became time consuming. Each birdhouse had different Pennsylvania Dutch designs on each side. That alone was time consuming but I knew I could never make both sides alike and figured they could be mixed and matched at a whim. Since they all shared a common theme, Pennsylvania Dutch and colors, it would be fun to display!

The base however, had to be painted twice after I decorated it, put the crackle on and nearly lost the entire design!

Slowly getting there!

Now, you have to realize that during all this I had about a 20-30 minute back! That was about how long I was allowed to be sitting upright before problems developed...especially back aches from the surgery. Oddly I could take all the walks I wanted but sitting upright put a great deal of pressure on your back, especially your lower back where my surgery was, and could get very testy! I took more than one muscle relaxant at bedtime. So in many ways it took a long time to create this. Not really a good sign because I found myself adding more and more ideas until I decided to just stop!

 By the end I was painting, resting and back to get it done. Then I napped two hours but when I woke up I was happy with this and learned many lessons both in design and using new, to me, materials.

Now, I have to go back to the black birdhouse and work on that. The instructions are not very good so I turned to YouTube to see how to use DecoArts Crackle Medium and discovered other alternatives notably (and much cheaper) white glue. I tried that white glue stunt and well, I need to watch that video again. It just made a mess I had to sand off and paint over.

The finished BIRDHOUSE NEIGHBORS project

Please visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com for the details on this item and many other crafts and birdhouses.

Check out my end of the year Christmas sale where ALL Christmas items are 25% off from now to January 22, 2015.