Rubber stamped paper frame around a collage on an art journal page.I made the collage based on an activity prompt by Somerset Studio Magazine. The stencils for the collage are by The Crafter’s Worshop and Tim Holtz. The rubber stamps in black making up the frame are of my own design. The background paper is by p13.
I made this rubber stamped paper frame for an art journal page. You can make one like it for that purpose or other projects such as scrapbooks, greeting cards, photo displays and more.
When I placed my collage on this piece of decorative paper for my art journal, I thought it needed a little more so I decided to make a frame for it. I used tracing paper to draw out the size and shape I wanted. Then I transferred my drawing to scrap card stock and cut a template to use for tracing.
I traced around and cut out four frame pieces.
I wanted black and near-white rubber stamped images to glue to the frames, so I got a bunch of stamps out that are of my own design and stamped them in black stamping ink on cream color card stock. Some of these stamp designs are available in my Etsy shop, and some only exist as hand carved stamps.
Tearing the stamped cardstock into strips for making smaller mosaic pieces
I tore the stamped images into small pieces, and glued them to the frames.
After trimming the frames were done and ready to mount in my art journal.
I’m working on a lesson plan to possibly teach at Thomas Dunn Learning Center. I plan to make another, more polished sample. You might enjoy seeing the steps I took to make my prototype.
I took a piece of paper and drew lines in pencil to roughly divide it into 7 vertical sections – one for each letter in ROYGBIV, the way were taught to memorize the colors of the rainbow when I was young – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.
I made each divider line a double line, then hand drew some overlapping bird silhouettes in pencil. I treated the birds as negative space and the sections above and below as the positive space. I outlined and then filled in with black pen doodles the top and bottom sections above and below each bird. I erased the pencil lines.
ROYGBIV starts with Red, but I wanted Red to be toward the middle and not the end since the warm colors draw the eye more. I started outlining the negative space on the inside edge with red colored pencil starting with the fourth line from the left. I outlined each divider line in the successive rainbow colors in both directions and for about half the bird shape on outline on either side. I gave the outlining a soft graded treatment so that the white birds would have a “glow” to them and come forward visually when the background was filled in and darkened.
I colored in a mosaic of color patches in colored pencil roughly following the rainbow progression. For example where it’s supposed to be violet, I colored with violet and analagous colors such as purple and pink. The only thing I left white was the middle of the bird shapes.
Colored pencil leaves kind of a waxy surface that doesn’t take pen or marker ink well sometimes, so I sprayed the piece with Workable Fixatif to treat the surface to accept marker and pen.
Here is how it looked with the background textures partially filled in.
I wanted a darker background so the birds would stand out. Some of the doodles I drew lended themselves to filling in the negative space in solid black. Other patterns I had to get a little creative with to find a way to make them darker. I looked for ways to add solid black areas to those patterns.
Here it is all filled in. I’m going to make a neater sample on sturdier paper as a sample then schedule the class. This was a test to see if the concept would work, and I think it will! Do you have an suggestions? Please comment if so!
Here is Dad in Open Art Studio with me at Thomas Dunn Learning Center a couple of days ago. He’s coloring in a black and white doodle he did last year.
Believe it or not I have another baby starling! No name yet. I guess I am trying not to get too attached in case it doesn’t make it. But I think it’s far too late for that isn’t it! Doesn’t take long to fall in love with these little ones. I got it through my online pet starling rescue group. The finder said it was sneezing and on Monday it was having bad breathing problems so I got it to Family Pet Hospital. They were able to see it on short notice (THANK YOU!) and prescribed antibiotics which I will give for two weeks. It’s doing much better. Please pray that it makes it!
Here is Family Pet Hospital’s FB page https://www.facebook.com/familypetstl They treat birds, chameleons, bats, geckos, snakes, fish, iguanas, o’possums, vultures, bats, scorpions, frogs, aardvarks, eagles, hedgehogs, turkeys, pigs, peafowl, monitors, etc. They have an aviary in there with canaries, finches and keets. My kind of place! Oh yeah dogs and cats too. Check out their patient photos!
My new little one is on antibiotics and is doing better. I still hear the lung crackling sound. Any suggestions for supportive care? I’m making sure it’s warm enough and I have a damp t-shirt partially over the bucket it’s in for humidity and quiet. It’s eating starling baby mix and I’m also giving it bits of apple and blueberry dipped in yogurt. Poops look good. I take it out once every 45 minitues to feed and change the paper towel so it’s not sitting in poop. It’s averaging one poop per feeding.
Now I’m going to back up a little and explain how I got to the point of adopting baby starlings. For people in the know about starlings, they are one of the most desirable pet birds you can have. They are admittedly high maintenance, but as far as rewards to the owner such as bonding, interactivity, beauty, singing, training and talking with human words they are everything a bird lover could want in a companion bird. Although where I live it’s generally illegal to posess wild birds, European Starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, are one of a very few exceptions because they are not native to the US and are considered invasive. In my area there are no wild bird rehab facilities or rehabbers that I know of who will take a rescued baby starling and raise it for release. If a baby starling needs help, the choices are to let it die, take it to a facility to be euthanized, or find someone to adopt it.
I acquired my first starling, Attila, in 2009 and my second, Pooky, in 2011. Attila is still with me but I lost Pooky suddenly to unknown causes last December.
I was distraught for a long time over losing Pooky, it’s still hard for me to look at that graphic above or to talk about it. My other starling Attila was very disturbed as well. She’s better now but she still faces the direction his cage used to be for several hours a day, I wonder if she’s looking for him still. To help both of us, Tom and I adopted two budgies, Thoth and Horus, and two zebra finches, Rocky and Adrienne. These are great birds and we love them. Attila and I needed their actions and song to help with our loss. They are not a substitute for starlings no matter how wonderful they are. So I found some starling rescue groups online and put myself on the waiting list to adopt one.
In late April one of my groups announced that there were three babies who needed rehoming in Tennessee. I was the closest person available to go get them, so I did it. Two of them did not make it. The finder told me they were looking bad while I was still on my way there and when I first saw them I didn’t have high hopes, so I was disappointed but not surprised that I lost those two. A lot of times by the time a baby bird gets into human hands they could have been through a lot. Going hungry, getting cold, sick, injured, etc. The survivor is doing great and his name in Theophilus.
Theophilus is Greek for “lover of God”. I was thinking while driving to go get him that if any of the birds survived I was going to give them a spiritual name. I had a lot of time to think about what a leap of faith I was taking by jumping in my car to take a pretty long drive to get birds that might not even be alive by the time I could get there. It was kind of crazy, but it felt good to do something crazy after months of doldrums from grief and inactivity from an arm injury and other problems from the last few years. I texted the finder along the way, letting him know that as long as any of them were still alive I was going to keep coming. If any of them had a chance, I wanted to give it to them if possible.
Here is a video of Tom feeding Theophilus about a month ago. He’s in superb health from what I can tell and is super active. So active he’s a handful! They calm down when they get older.
The new little one is unnamed as of yet, but I’m more and more hopeful that it’s going to survive so I’ve started brainstorming! It’s perching, preening, and flapping wings to practice. It still sneezes a bit and I think there is still a crackling sound, but it’s growing and the feathers look fantastic. It’s had six days of a two-week antibiotic prescription. I think it’s getting ready to jump out of the bucket it’s in. When that happens it will move to a baby cage / travel cage and I’ll take it with me everywhere I go until it’s eating on its own.
Here are some past articles I’ve written about starlings:
