Free as a Bird by Alison Hall

I don't know about you, but I love using corrugated card in my artwork! It provides great texture, & best of all, it's free! (Well, mine is, as I pinch the kit kat boxes from the newsagents where I work! Lol!)



For my birdy hanger, I used the lovely 'Free as a Bird' and 'Birds of a Feather' stamp sets, and also the Bare Tree, which is such a useful little stamp.

Here's how I made my piece

1. Take a piece of corrugated card (approx. 9" x 7"), and rip off most of the covering to reveal plenty of texture. Paint this with copper paint dabber, then, when it's dry, highlight the raised area with hazlenut and terracotta paint dabbers. Distress the edges with a Tim Holtz distress tool.

2. Now take a piece of white card (approx. 7" x 5"), and colour it with crushed olive, wild honey, rusty hinge, and forest moss distress inks. Use the same inks to stamp a background with the Bare Tree and Distressed Background. Dry this with a heat gun, then stamp the tree twice, and the flock of birds (from Birds of a Feather) with versamark ink, and emboss the images with vintage photo distress embossing powder. Use the distress tool on the edges, then ink them with forest moss DI.



3. Stamp the bird box and wren from Birds of a Feather, and the birdcage and phrase from Free as a Bird, onto book pages with black ink. I used pages from a book on birds to keep up the theme, but any will do. Tear around the phrase, and ink the edges with black. Cut out the other images.



4. Assemble the backgrounds and images as shown, then add copper coloured eyelets to the top, and thread with copper bead chain.

Hope you like my little piece of art, and thanks for looking!