Hope is the thing with feathers

For this project, I once again used some of the items that were sent in the package from www.dollarstorecrafts.com ‘s Super Secret Stashbusting Challenge in April as well as some items from my own stash.  I’m so proud of the fact that I didn’t have to go out and purchase anything for the project and that I’m finally using up some items in my stash (some that I’ve had for YEARS).  I began by watering down my green acrylic craft paint to make it more like a stain because I wanted the grain of the photo frame to show through.  The frame was purchased at a Michaels’ sale – it was only $1 and is about 6 inches square in size.  It also has a little hole and peg at the back so that it will stand on its own if desired.

For the background paper, I used some Creative Memories scrapbooking paper that I’ve had on hand for about 10 years.  I printed out a favourite Emily Dickinson poem and mounted that on top of the decorative paper.

For the tree, I used a combination of the old Creative Memories papers and some newer scrapbooking papers from Michaels.  I freehanded a tree trunk and the larger leaves on the tree.  For the tiny little leaves, I used a Fiskars punch that has three leaf shapes on it.

The bird is one of two received in the stashbusting challenge envelope.  The other one…well I’m not sure what exactly to do with it.  I tried glittering it as per Martha Stewart but it didn’t turn out quite as I expected it so right now it’s sitting in my “craft fail” pile.  I stare at it every couple of days trying to decide how to refurbish it into something delightful.  These birds are those ones that are made from a styrofoam base and then have feathers glued on them.  I first glued this onto the frame using hot glue but all that did was pull the feathers off the back of the bird so I tried again with Aleene’s Quick Dry Tacky Glue and it’s very secure now!

This red wire flower is one of those shaped paper clips.  I bought it at Michaels’ several months ago in a package of 5 paper clips for 25 cents.  A great bargain and I knew I’d find uses for them!  A little hot glue held this in place really well.

These little bunch of cherries is another find from the stashbusting envelope.  They appear to be crocheted and had a pin back on them but I removed that and hot glued them onto the frame.  I had been really unsure of how to use both the bird and the cherries when I first saw them but the more I looked at them, the more it seemed like they just wanted to go together!