Cardboard, Crafts, and Birds

After making Brenden's awesome nightstand, we had a few extra pieces of cardboard lying around the house. I was bored one evening and really wanted to make something. My desire to create most often leaves me stranded without an idea of what to create. This usually translates to me being fidgety for a bit, looking through my art and craft supplies cabinet (which is severely lacking, by the way), browsing online for any inspiration, and then getting stuck online reading home decorating blogs or stupid articles on CRACKED.com and/or Facebook stalking. However, this evening was different! A large piece of cardboard was calling me. I pulled out the only bottles of acrylic paint I currently owned, all in traditional baby pastel colors, from a project Brenden and I did a little over a month ago. I mixed some colors to make a nice creamy yellow and then started painting.

I had no idea what I was going to paint. I just knew I had a paintbrush in hand and brown cardboard on the table. I suppose I also knew I wanted a yellow cream background on whatever it was going to be. I'm not quite sure what happened but I got some water on my pseudo-canvas and quickly made a watery streak down the center of my piece of cardboard. Oops. I wasn't too perturbed, though, because I still didn't really know what it was I was trying to paint. Once the water dried, I painted a huge green stripe over the watery streak. I thought the green was gross and then painted a huge black stripe over the green. And suddenly, INSPIRATION!

I sketched out a giant bird shape and painted it white. I determined it look unfinished and boring so I looked around for more inspiration. I grabbed the newspaper I was using to prevent a mess from my painting and starting cutting it up. I glued pieces of the newspaper onto my bird shape, painted it white again, and then used a black paint pen to draw the bird's feathers. And there it was. Cute random bird project. Made with cardboard.

It doesn't have a permanent home yet, so it's just propped up against the wall next to Brenden's model cars in our computer room.

Sometimes I pretend the bird is sitting on a giant cable.
Other times I pretend it is just a really tiny bird.

Cardboard bird, model car, and Lord of the Rings Elven Helmet shadow.
Yes, that's right. We are awesome.
With my self-confidence renewed by my unlikely and easy success with the cardboard bird project, I sought a new challenge. For those craftily inclined, I'm sure this little rolled fabric flower would pose no threat. But for me, having never wielded a hot glue gun without supervision and having very limited knowledge about fabric in general, it was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. I thought by the end of it I would have a cute little flower not this thing:

My sad attempt at making a cute crafty flower.

This is what it was supposed to look like except with my blue polka dot fabric. If you want to try making this flower, THIS is the tutorial I used. I'm sure yours will turn out better than mine did.
I had no real purpose in making this flower except that I was bored while Brenden was out home teaching. (Apparently, my muse is boredom.) I had some fabric from a project Brenden and I were planning on doing about two years ago and put on hold until one of us learned how to sew and I was spending too much time online so after finding that flower tutorial I decided I would try it. I pulled out my brand new glue gun (what have I been doing all my life without a glue gun?) and got to work. My "flower" didn't even try to look like a flower. Brenden laughed at it when I showed it to him. Maybe I used the wrong fabric, I probably pulled the fabric too tight in its rolls, and sometimes I globbed too much glue onto the fabric-- it just didn't turn out right. Now I'm trying to think of what I can do with it. It's really small so I thought about attaching it to a hair pin but when I put the "flower" in my hair and looked in the mirror, it looked like I just had a ball of rolled up fabric stuck in my hair. That's really what it looks like (and is)-- a ball of rolled up fabric, perhaps neatly rolled up but rolled up nonetheless and looking nothing like a flower. Maybe I'll have better luck next time. With a completely different project.

And so this morning, I pulled out my sketchbook and charcoal pencils. I am a little more comfortable with these items than fabric and glue guns, even though I go through phases of drawing and not drawing. Right now it seems I'm on the end part of my not drawing phase. (As indicated by my desire to draw this morning.) Also, I was so annoyed with my failed flower, I needed to somehow redeem myself. It was such an easy flower project! How did it go wrong?!

I'm currently formulating an idea for a friend's birthday present and this drawing was a little preparation for that upcoming project.

Can you tell what kind of bird it is? The proportions are a little off. The head's a bit too big for the rest of the body and the body is a little too plump but not too bad for my first bird drawing, right?

In the process of drawing. My bird is missing an eye.

With some color! It's supposed to a Baltimore Oriole.

I love birds. The Biology 100 class I took at BYU was taught by an ornithology professor who was so enthusiastic about birds, you couldn't not love them after taking his class. I learned to recognize certain bird calls. I was able to identify birds by their size, feather colors and calls while I was hiking. I would often stop walking on my way to my classes to try to find the bird whose call I had just heard so loudly above me. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to take flight and soar high above cities and forests, farmland and beaches. I loved watching barn swallows flit around the parking lot at my old apartment complex, their forked tail feathers behind them. And California quails with their loud "CHI-CA-GO" calls were fun to listen to. Oh, I love birds. What beautiful creatures.