Other Supplies
Unfinished wood birdhouses, Wax candle, Sandpaper (medium grit), Flat brush, Liner brush, Felt pieces in various colors, Scissors, Nine coordinating buttons, White craft glue, Pen, Clear acrylic sealer (optional)
Instructions
- Begin by basecoating each birdhouse: – one Cottage Rose, one Yellow Citron and one Calypso Sky. Also paint the roofs. Give at least two coats and allow to dry.
- Rub wax candle with firm pressure on the edges, around the bird hole and on the fronts and roofs of the birdhouses. Rub the candle randomly; anywhere you want the distressed look is where you are going to rub wax. NOTE: On the Yellow Citron birdhouse, only the roof is distressed. This means you would only rub wax on the roof of this birdhouse.
- Paint the birdhouse body Cottage Rose and Calypso Sky birdhouses Wicker White. Paint several coats, covering up the wax and other paint colors. Allow to dry.
- Repeat the same process on the roofs with Teddy Bear Brown. Allow to dry.
- Take your felt scraps and cut flowers; draw a large flower shape with a pen and then cut just inside the lines. You’ll also want to cut some “shingles” for one of the roofs. Set your flower shapes aside.
- When your birdhouses are dry, sand them lightly. You’ll be able to see the areas where the wax is under the paint – sand in these places to remove the paint from the surface, giving the project a distressed look. The more distressed you would like the project, the more you should sand. Just be careful not to sand TOO much – you don’t want to reach the surface below the paint.
- Now that your birdhouses are distressed, you can add the felt pieces. Glue the flowers on randomly with white craft glue – suggestions are shown in the photo. Also glue the shingles onto the roof. Finally, glue the buttons onto the centers of the flowers. Allow to dry.
- Using the liner brush and Hauser Green Light thinned with a little water, paint stems and leaves below each of the flowers. Allow to dry at least twenty-four hours before using.
- Optional: spray all birdhouses with clear acrylic sealer for durability.