A Little Birdie

Spellbinders brought out four lovely build-a-birdhouse die sets, one for each season, and this week’s card uses the Summer Birdhouse.  Since I was planning to ink blend the colour on, I cut out all the die-cuts from white card, including a bird from the Sweet Birds on a Branch set.

For the background, I blended ink around my cloud stencil for the sky, then taped across the horizon and blended the sea using Distress Oxides in Salty Ocean, Chipped Sapphire and Uncharted Mariner.

For some additional background interest, I added two palm trees which were cut using dies from Tonic Studios Craft Kit #61.  I lightly blended yellow ink around the bottom edge.

To make the beach for the birdhouse to sit on, I blended on some light brown ink then added DOx Mustard Seed and spritzed with water to give a speckled look.  To add extra dimension and texture to the shell and starfish, I heat embossed with some coral powder.  The sentiment is from the Tweet Sentiments set.

My friend has a great sense of humour and loves our cat-related stories so I decided to add one of the cats from my current favourite set, Snarky Cats, to the inside of the card.  I sketched a few small feathers and coloured them and the cat with Copic markers.  One of the other cats was used to decorate the envelope.