Birds On A Wire

What you’ll need:

- black jumbo paper clips

- 1 sheet of black card stock

- Mod Podge Gloss Finishor  Mod Podge ® Dimensional Magic.

- toothpick or bamboo skewer

- hot glue gun (optional) or glue

- black string
- 2 pins/thumb tags

- black spray paint

- floral foam

 

1. Find some images of bird silhouettes, size them so they are in good proportion with your paper clips. Then print or transfer it to your black card stock and cut with a craft knife or nail scissors (I use nail scissors a lot in crafting as you may find out lol)

Make sure you have at least two of every kind of bird shape, as we’ll be sandwiching the paper clip between two images.

I imported mine into my trusty Silhouette Craft Cutter and had it do all the cutting work for me! One of the huge advantages of this craft cutter – being able to import your own images!

Anyway, I digress!

Now, if you are doing the cutting by hand, don’t worry about the small details that mine have. Make the shapes as simple as possible and just get the basic outline of the bird. You will be grateful not only while you are cutting but also during the following steps!

2. Now, for this step you can go one of two ways. Ideally, you would use the  Mod Podge ® Dimensional Magic.to do this. However, if you have Mod Podge Gloss Finish on hand it does work too. It won’t dry as hard, or as fast than the   Mod Podge ® Dimensional Magic and cleaning up the edges is a little more labor intensive, but it does work.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I am using the Mod Podge Gloss Finish, as I had run out of the dimensional magic!

If you are using the Dimensional Magic, just use the applicator and work your way from the outside of the bird shape in. Get a nice even coat. For the smaller and trickier areas, use a tooth pick to pull some of the coating onto the small details.

If you plan on using the paper clip with the bird facing in either direction, mod podge both images. If you are happy with the bird only going one way, you can only do one of the shapes for each bird, as the back doesn’t really need the dimension!

If you are using the Gloss finish Mod Podge, use a toothpick and/or bamboo skewer to pile on a thick even-ish coat – also working from the outside of the shape inwards and using a toothpick to pull some of the mod podge into the more detailed areas.

If it appears a little “lumpy” don’t worry about it too much, it will even out some while it dries.

Leave it to dry. The Gloss finish Mod podge took 24 hrs to dry, the Dimensional magic dried over night.

Here they are after about 12 hrs:

And here after 24 hrs:

 

3. Once they have dried, turn each mod podged shape around and affix the paper clip somewhere around the middle of it.

I used a hot glue gun as it was handy, but unless you are really experienced with hot glue you may want to opt for regular glue. These shapes are small and fiddly and hot glue can get a little painful (ask me how I know lol) Some glue guns also don’t allow nearly as much precision as some of the shapes may need.

Let the paper clip dry, then put glue on the rest of the shape and apply the back shape, sandwiching the paperclip between the two.

4. Once everything dried, trim off any excess glue with a craft knife or nail scissors.

5. Gently sand any rough edges with some very fine grit sand paper. This will work much better with the Dimensional Magic, as it dries much harder. The gloss finish will take a little more work.

Don’t worry about small imperfections too much though. They really add to the feel of  “feathers”.

 

6. You may at this point decide that you are finished. Especially if you used the Dimensional Magic,  you will have a pretty bird with a glass like black depth to it. If you like the look of it – you are done.

If you want to carry on, the next step is to spray paint the lot black.

It doesn’t matter what spray paint you use really, as long as it’s black. I had some Rustoleum Flat enamel spray paint left, so that is what I used. I was going for the more wrought iron look

Stick your paper clips into a piece of floral foam and spray the birds in even, sweeping strokes in a well ventilated area. If you mod podged both back and front, make sure you also spray paint both.

Here’s one in mid-spray!

Then let the birds dry.

7. Cut a length of black string, make a knot on both ends.

Then make 2 little bows on either end and use the pins to pin it to your desired location.

Add photos to your bird clips and then slide the bird clips with the photos onto your string. And you’re done!

Here’s a close up :

And the finished product again:

I hope you’ll have fun making some of these birds on a wire!

 

I will be linking this project to the parties listed on this page.

Please visit for a LOT of awesome tutorials and crafting ideas!