Create Faux Stained Glass Folk Birds Using Promarkers and Acrylic Pens

1. Introduction & Project Overview: Hello, and welcome to this class. How to create pretend stained glass folk Birds. I love stained glass, and I love folk birds. And a couple of years ago, I discovered a little technique using pro markers and bleed proof paper that gave you a kind of stained glass effect, and I want to share that technique with you today. I'm Dawn Codra. I'm an artist, designer, and an alistic health educator. And I live in the North of Scotland, and I've been teaching classes for a long, long time. Let me explain a little bit more about what this class is about. Two years ago, I was asked to take part in a community project where we were asked to make something that looked a little bit like stained glass that we could then put up on our own windows and then allow the public to come and view what we'd created. Playing with the pro markers and the bleedproof paper, I managed to create these wonderful effects here. This one had stencils added on the top of it, which elevated it even higher, and it was an amazing result. You can see from these two figures of Angels, the one on the left is the bleed proof paper, the one on the right is just a photocopied version of it. And you can see how totally opaque that one is compared to the more translucent one on the left hand side. We'll be focusing on simple folk bird shapes with a little heart in the middle if you want it. And we'll also have a look at how to create little decorative birds as well by taking photocopies of the original that can go onto your mantel shelf. As always, this is going to be a very easy relaxed class. I'll take you through all the processes, starting with what materials we need, how to create the grid, how we plot the bird, which then turns into a template, and how we look at what decoration we're going to add to it, which then of course, will lead on to filling it with color. And deciding what color combinations we want to go with. We'll look at how we photocopy it and add pattern to the photocopied version so that we can then use that for doing the shelf decorations. Now, if you're a little bit unsure about pattern, nip over to my class exploring color contrast and pattern because that gives you some great ideas for pattern, and it also delves into the whole world of what color combinations work really well. I'll share with you my techniques for strengthening the printed birds so that we can make shelf decorations with them. And then finally, we'll look at the way in which to attach the birds to the window. So I hope that you'll join me in this class. It will be just as easy and relaxed as all my other classes. A lot of fun. So I hope that I'll see you in the next session. 2. Materials: These are the materials that I recommend for this class. First of all, you're going to need some copy paper, you know, printer paper. If you can get one that's 120 GM two, then that's better because you're going to be drawing your grid onto this and it needs to be quite robust. So it would be better if you can use a higher quality paper rather than, you know, really, really lower quality one. You're also going to need some bleed proof marker paper. Now, this is Windsor and Newton. You don't have to go with this brand. You can go with whichever brand you like. Again, this is 75 grams. It's a decent quality as this one, and you're going to need this because it's going to sort of become a tracing paper. In effect, as we create a template of the bird shape, and then you're going to need more pieces of paper on top of that to draw around it. And depending on how many birds you want to do, I would suggest maybe three or four sheets of this. Obviously, if you've got a pad, then you can use as many as you like. You're also going to need a ruler, scissors, an HB pencil if you've got one. If you don't have an HB pencil, then one that's quite soft rather than a hard one. You'll need an eraser. I've got a selection here of acrylic paint pens. I've got two gold in different nibs, a fine one and a thicker one. I've got a white in a thicker nib, and I've got a black fine liner. You might not use all these. Don't go out buying things if you haven't already got them, see what you've got in your own supplies. It's not totally dependent on your having those things. What you will need, though, is a selection of pro markers. Now, these are some of the colors that I'm going to be using in mine. My suggestion is that you try and find some pale colors as backgrounds because they're easier to then go over the top with the darker colors. But again, I would just have a play and, you know, do yourself some little color charts and see what colors you like when you've then created more color on top of them. And what do I mean exactly by that? Let me show you. Basically, let's have a look here. You know, if I'm going to be using orange for one of the bird's wings, for example, I just draw this orange on here as opposed to, let's say, a darker blue, then it's going to be so much easier for me to put pattern on top of the lighter color. Like that, than it is for me to be able to put pattern on top of that one. Now, this is quite a dark color in itself. You know, I can put some pattern on it, but you can see that it's not contrasting enough really for you to be able to see much difference. So starting off with a lighter color underneath will probably give you better results or yeah, results that look a bit more that let the light through is what I'm trying to say that actually let the sunlight through easier. It would also be handy if you had a black sharpie pen because that's really useful for when we do the outline of the bird that then becomes the template like this. And I think that's about it, so let's get started. 3. Creating the Grid: Now you could draw your own bird completely free hand on a piece of paper, but I've sort of created a rough grid here which helps me to just plot a template a bit easier. And it's an A four sheet of photocopying paper. Again, it's the strong stuff so that, you know, it lasts me, it doesn't tear so easily. And basically, what I've done is I've gone in, I've measured across the top. And I've taken it roughly to 7.5 centimeters. I think you end up with a little bit extra on this one here. So let's call that 7.5 centimeters. 7.5 centimeters. Same on that one. And I think that one ended up being just seven, and that's absolutely fine. So market the bottom and the top. You know, mark it 7.5. Keep moving it on 7.5. Market and then join those lines vertically like that. Then you can turn your page around and measuring that across, I had to turn it around the other way around and do it with inches. So, again, we're just over 8 " there. So I've roughly done it as 2 ". Well, what I did was I kind of like, you know, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be so precise on this. Do it as 2 ", 4 ", 6 ", and then 8 ". You can see there that if I've got the four inch mark in the middle line, then I'm just a bit short of 2 " there, and I'm just about 2 " there. So it's roughly 2 " across that way as well. Don't worry too much. This is not meant to be precision, calculating at all here. It really isn't. So then you've done your verticals, and now you're going to mark it out each section along those outer edges and then draw a line so that you end up with roughly equal rectangles, 16 in total that are more or less the same. What am I trying to say? Same dimension. 4. Plotting the Bird: Next, I want you to take a sheet of your bleed proof paper and put that over the top of that grid, so it kind of acts like tracing paper so that you can see you can see the grid underneath. And I want you to take your HB pencil and mark a little point halfway along that grid there, where the two lines meet there, another one. Call that number one and number two. Halfway along, actually know about a third of the way along of that next rectangle. Go to make that number three. We're going to go all the way onto here onto the last rectangle and put a point there, make that number four. And then, more or less halfway, we're going to put another dot and make that number five. We're going to come down to this section here. Another dot, make that number six. Go along to the next section where they meet, put another dot, make that number seven, go all the way along there, so that it's lining up with number four above, and we're going to make that number eight. We're going to come back to this line here. In that section or that intersection of lines, make that number nine. We're going to go across here and not quite as far as number eight, probably about two thirds of the way along. We're going to make that number ten, and then midway between these last two rectangles at the bottom, about midway, we're going to make that number 11. And the reason that we've done that is because we're going to then plot out a bird shape like this one. So I'll show you how we're going to join those up. Now, this really is just a rough guide. You don't have to do this at all. If you'd rather do it freehand. I find it quite helpful in creating templates for myself. So we'll start, first of all, with joining number one to two. Then we're going to go on to three. And we're going to stop that there. We're going to go 4-5. We're then going to join number two to number six, but I'm going to bring a little curve in there. So I'm not going to go down and do it as a straight line. I'm going to bring a curve in like that. Then I'm going to more or less follow that line. It's not quite straight. It's got a slight curve to it to number seven there. And I'm going to go back to number three, and I'm going to create a double curved line that meets number seven. Do this lightly because you'll end up having to do one or two rubbings out, I can tell you. Right, from number five, we're going to just bring that in slightly and then come out to number eight. That's actually where the beak of the bird is, if we look here. Can see there we've gone 5-8. We're going to bring a curve round and go to number ten. So let's do that. Carry that curve round to number ten all the way down to number 11. Join that up with number nine. And then we're going to go right back to one and bring a big sweeping curve down here to that number nine dot. Like that. Now, we have to get the wing here. So I'm going to put a dot here. If we just look at this rectangle here, I'm going to put a dot about there, and I'm going to bring that number four to there, and I'm going to bring that wing down to there as well. In fact, I've gone a little bit past it, but that looks about right. Now, this is where we make the adjustments now. So if I take that grid out from underneath it, when we look at the shape that we've got, this is where we can do a bit of refining. So again, I'm going to just curve that a bit there and bring that to the beak. So that's a line there that is going to end up being rubbed out. This is why it's really good to do it very lightly because at this stage, you will end up doing quite a bit of rubbing out. That looks a bit wobbly to me, so I'm just going to bring that down and straighten that up a little bit. There we go. Get rid of that slightly wobblier line. Now, you're not going to be actually drawing on this piece of paper. So it doesn't matter at this stage if you've got, you know, a few lines showing. But we do want to make sure that when we're doing it on the correct piece of paper, that we've got no pencil lines showing that we do want because those pencil lines will show through the pro marker pens. Now, do we like this section here with this wing? I think I'm going to bring that down a bit further there, actually. To the like that. And that looks a better shape to me. Now, this is only the way that I'm doing it for myself. You might decide you want a completely different wing shape, and you can use the grid in a very different way to the way I've used it. There's something not quite right about this section here, as well. So I'm just going to play with that a little bit more, bring that in a bit more. In fact, I think that's probably. Let's just make that a bit. Take that back on there and bring that round there a bit and see how that looks. So keep just, you know, playing with the shape that you like. Does that feel better for me as a bird shape? With the beak, now, yes, that's better. That's better. So a little bit of adjusting in that bit there in that area there. And there we've got a bird shape that I'm quite happy with. Now, if I compare it to that one that I did earlier, let's see how those two compare. So actually, with that one, I've got a much wider wing. You can just see underneath there that I've got a wider wing, and the shoulder, as it were, of the bird is a bit wider, as well. So you can see how you can do these differently. In fact, the head shape is a bit wider as well on the one underneath. But basically, that's the way to use the grid just for you to get a sense of what kind of bird shape you want. And it might be that you, as I say, you use totally different shape to start with. You can, you know, make that go like that, or you can give it tail feathers like this. You can do whatever you like with it. It was really just using the numbers and the grid to give you a starting point for which to decide what shape of bird you wanted. And as I say, if you don't want to use a grid at all and you just want to go straight in freehand, please do that as well. 5. Adding Decoration: I'm going to use the original template that I created for myself, and I'm going to take a sheet of the bleedproof paper again, put it over that. And that one that's underneath now, that will always be my template. In fact, it's worth writing on the top so that you don't end up coloring on there, because you can use this template for, you know, creating lots more birds. So I'm going to take my HB pencil and begin the process of tracing over the top of that. I'm using a pencil very lightly as I go around. I might even make some more adjustments. We'll see. In fact, I think I want that to be over there, actually, like that. That's it. Drawing around that. I'm doing it so lightly I'm not even sure you can see this on the camera, actually. And they pop the eye in at this point. And then the template can come out underneath, and that's now ready for me to start deciding how I want to add the decorations on it. I've kept it pretty stylized. I've used a bit of a flower theme going on, and it's now ready for me to start adding some colour. 6. Beginning the Colour Fill: Before you start to use your pens, don't forget to put something down that can protect your surface underneath. I've just got an old piece of plastic sheeting here that always does the trick. It won't bleed through onto the back of the paper. You'll see it, but it won't actually bleed through onto the surface underneath. But when you're using your pens, if you go out over the edge of your paper, that will go onto your surface that you're using. So best just to have some kind of sheeting. As you can see from the design, I've kept it quite simple. I will add other details to it later on, but I just wanted to get the basic shapes down. And I'm going to start off with canary yellow. And I'm going to do a combination of using the thick nib and using the thin nib. And usually I end up having to put more than one layer on, and that's absolutely fine. Now, don't worry if you go out over the edge of the bird because you're going to cut it out anyway, so it really doesn't matter. If you end up, you know, going over the lines, in fact, you know, just go for it. I encourage you to release that old thing where the teacher or the parents said you're coloring out of the lines, that's not allowed. Just color out of the Color outside of the lines. That's what I always say. But not on the inside, only around the outside edges, of course. So that is the start. Now, it might look depending on what colors you're using, it might look a bit. How can I describe it. Sort of like this, you know, as if you've got lines into it. Depends on how much ink you've got in your marker pen, and if you get that kind of effect, it's fine because you just put another layer on top, and that will make it all look a bit more even as it were. So I want to carry that yellow down and round here. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the finer nib to go around these petals because I want to color them in a different shade. So I'm going to use this fineer nib to kind of do the outline bits or to get into those areas where if I use the fatter nib, it would go over the petals and I don't want it to. I want to keep them pretty clean. Now, the reason why I've kept the pencil light is because when the markup pen goes over the top of it, in fact, let's show you what I mean, let me just grab a pencil. The marker pen doesn't cover up the pencil line. It shows underneath like that. So that's why it's great to be able to keep your pencil lines very faint. And why you know, rub out your pencil lines before you put your marker pen on, um, if you don't want them to show through. Now, that all looks a bit scruffy at the moment, but it will dry like the head has. It will dry much more evenly. So don't worry too much if that's what it looks like to begin with. You can always even out the color, like I say, with a second coat. Now, I want to carry on that one through there and through into the tail, as well. So I'm going to turn my page around so that I've always got the paper at an angle where I don't have anything obstructing my eyeline as I'm using the pen. I'm doing fairly broad strokes there, all going in the same direction rather than this kind of coloring in. Keep turning your page around where you need to turn it. Now this is a color that I've used quite a lot, so I can tell that it is beginning to run out of ink a little bit. Now, when two colors meet each other, you might get a little bit of bleed going on into each other. So the way to get around that is either to let it dry completely before you add the next color or just don't be bothered about the fact that it bleeds. Personally, I'm not that bothered. So I'm going to go ahead here and I'm going to do the wing. And for this wing, I'm using sunflower. Now, I'm going to do it in two well, in different sections here. So let's start this one here. I'm going to do that section in the same color. Now, I'm not doing second coats on these just yet. I want these first coats to dry, and then that'll give me an indication as to what might need a second coat on it. I'm going to go with a slightly deeper orange here. This is pumpkin. And I'm going to do those two bits and infill this color into there. So you can see how quickly this is beginning to take shape now. I gave that bit there. Round we go. I think I'll join those two bits up. Now I have got a little bit of bleed going on there, I can see that's just gone into that paler yellow, and that's absolutely fine. I really, really, really don't mind. And down we come. So you're getting the idea here of how I'm using these pens to color in the different block shapes. So I'm going to do a little bit more off camera so you don't have to watch the whole process and bring it back in when I've taken it a wee bit further. 7. Completing the Colour Fill: So as you can see, I've added some more color there. I want to find a way now to be able to link what's going on here with what's going on down here. So I'm going to take that color there, which is the sunflower. And I'm just going to fill in those. Oh, no, this happens to be a brush one rather than a small nib. You can get them as a brush marker. I've probably got a mixture of quite a few of the things depending on what sets I bought originally. So that starts to link that in there. And I actually picked up honeycomb by mistake. I meant to get that pumpkin colour to bring down here. But I picked up the honeycomb by mistake. So I had to find a way then to link what was going on down here with what was happening at the top. So that's why I ended up using it up there as well. So now I'm going to bring that pumpkin back in and do those little dots up there. Oh, here we have another brush one, look. I must be honest, I don't really pay much attention to what I'm picking up, and it's always a nice surprise then when I actually take the nib off. So that's it there before I add any other pattern whatsoever. Now, as you can see, the yellows dried quite nicely. That pumpkins dried nicely. I could do with putting one more coat of sunflower onto that bit there, so that's what I'll do. Give it one extra coat, and it has bled. You know, a lot of the colors have bled into each other. And what happens when you have a crossover at the edge, it often creates a slightly different color. But like I said, this doesn't matter because you're either going to outline in black, or you might use gold or you might even use white with a posca pen. So it really, really does not matter if you bleed over the edges. And as I've already done that one, I may as well give this one another second coat, and then they've got the same depth of color to them both. Turn that around, so I don't go over that cyan blue. Now, what I did was, as I was using each color then, I did a little color chart to remind me what color was what? Because in my, you know, excitement to get it colored, it's easy enough for me to pick up the wrong one, and I think that's the one I've picked up. So you can see here that the can is quite streaky. So I'm going to just give that another coat, as well. And that will even that out a little bit. Turn it round again so I can see what I'm doing. And I'm going to use the finer nib just for these bits here because I really don't want it to go over this yellow that I've just done. You can see where the two are meeting there. It's got a slightly greener blue, and it will either stay like that or it'll get covered up with something else depending on what I decide. Now, what I also used here is rather than leave any of the paper completely bare, I've got a very pale pen called almond, and this is what I tend to use for things like eyes and face as if I'm doing angels, because it gives you, it still stays pale, but it gives it a little bit of color there. So if you want to also create birds to put on your mantelpiece or your mantel shelf, this is a good time now to not do anything else to it just for the moment, but take a photocopy of it. So that's what I'm going to do, and then I'll show you I'll show you why we take a photocopy at this stage. 8. Adding Pattern (part one): Here we've got the original one, and here we've got the photocopy. And it hasn't come out too badly, actually. That one there's come out ever so slightly darker than this one. But the lovely thing here now is that I can put the original to one side for the moment. And on the photocopy, I can now practice doing some patterns. And also, I've used the good quality copy paper. When that is then glued onto a piece of card, this bird here now can become the bird that goes on the mantelpiece. What I could also do if I wanted to is to reduce the size on my photocopier and make it slightly smaller or slightly larger. But for the moment, I'm just going to use this particular copy here just to practice doing one or two different designs on it. And that means that I'm not, you know, making a hash of the original one. And then having to start the whole thing all over again. I can do a little bit of practice on this one here. So I'm going to go in with that lovely royal blue color. If I can find where I've put it, here we go. And I really like this color. I love this color. I'm just going to link this section here now with this section here and have a little practice if you want. What happens is when you use the very edge of the nib here and just press down on it there, it gives you this kind of lovely oval shape, which is really nice. So I'm just going to go into this, I'm gonna go over the edge because don't forget it's going to be cut out. And I'm going to bring that down to there. Now, because it's gone on top of a different color, it's not going to come out exactly the same blue as that one there, but at least you start getting this darker depth of color that's happening in the bottom, now happening on the top. And I think I'm also going to link that same pattern down in the bottom as well, like that. Let's take it one step further and we'll do it up here on these higher petals. And if I use the finer nib, might just do a little Now, that doesn't look quite as dramatic. No, dramatics the wrong word. Not sure what the word is, but I'm going to just change the shape of that. That's better so that it looks more like the ovals. And I'm going to give it some little dots up there as well. So you can see what I mean about how you can play around with the pattern here. Gonna also use this color to outline the bird's eye. 'cause that needed to be stronger. So this is where I can bring in gold and white pens, as well. So because this isn't one that we're going to be putting on the window, so you need to be able to see through it, I can really add a lot of gold onto this now, if that's what I want to do. So I'm going to do. I'm going to use it for going over some of these lines. And that's what I meant by don't worry if you end up going over the lines because, you know, when the two colors bleed into each other we can use exactly the same technique on the original as well. So I'm just going to go follow the lines where they join color. And take this gold pen there. So it starts to really take on quite a rich feeling to it now. So I'm literally just going to create gold dots, which gives it more of a texture to that yellow. Again, those of you that have taken my other class exploring color contrast and pattern, you'll remember how much I just love creating pattern. Sometimes it's hard for me to stop, really. Now, if I ended up doing this on here and thinking, No, I really don't like it, then what I could do, of course, is go back to the original one and take another photocopy and have another play until I got it to the point where I really, really did like it. I'm going to put a gold.in the middle of there. And up there. And to keep it consistent, a little through there as well. Now, I've got finer gold pens. This one is a one MR. Just pump it a little bit, make sure the ink's coming through. And I want to do some outlines coming down here like this. There we go. Right, I'm going to do something now on here. With this, I'm going to just outline these lovely shapes with the gold pen. Go outside the line 'cause you're going to be cutting it anyway. I think this also needs a bit more definition, so let's use that gold pen up here to define these petals up here. Now, I do feel that these sections need something. So I'm going to use the gold pen again. I no, I think I will use actually the turquoise that I used earlier on. So this was the turquoise. But before I do that, let's just see what happens if I put turquoise on top of that color. So this is where it's a good idea to have given yourself a little color palette down here, you can just have a little practice there as to what that might look like. And that's actually quite sweet. So that's what I'm going to use with this pen here. Now, I've just put gold on there. I've just put gold on there. So I'm going to turn this around make sure that I don't smudge what I've just done. I'm just going to do this kind of effect onto these solid colors just to break it up a little bit. Not much. I can still see much of the color underneath it, which is good. But it also brings a bit more texture that would even suggest a bit of a wing on a bird. And so on and so forth. 9. Adding Pattern (part two): I carried on doing that pattern here as well. I took another look at it, and I've outlined almost everything now with gold pen. I managed to smudge that eye and get it over there, but it doesn't matter. I can always cut that little bit out if I need to. And I've also taken a fine liner, and I've added some little dots across the top of the gold spot, and I've added some lines around here and some lines around here. And that, for me, brought it more in line with the darkness of that wing section there. It just made that there was, again, a connection going on with the whole bird. What I could do if I wanted to is also bring this stripy effect into here. So let's see what that would look like if I did that as well. You know, I'm just playing. I haven't really got a design in mind. I'm quite literally just playing and seeing what works and what doesn't work. Now, that to me, finishes that off and it links in with what's going down here with what's going on down here. So that will get cut out. Well, actually, yes, it will get cut out, and then it'll get stuck onto a slightly harder piece of card, which will then get cut out again, of course. And that will become the mantelpiece decoration. I'm going to go back to the original one now, and using that as a bit of a bit of a guide. Decide what patterns I'm going to put onto here. And I'll be mainly using the pro markers still. I will bring a little bit of gold pen into it, and I might bring a little bit of white into it as well. So I'm going to finish doing this here. You can see what it looks like just now. You can see it compared to that bird there, and I will decorate this and then let you see how it looks when it's finished. Now, interestingly, I decided that I would outline these bits here, not with a black, but with that royal blue to sort of give it a stained glass leaded feel to it, and I really don't like it at all. And that's on the original. So what can I do to bring that back to, you know, something that I prefer? Well, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take my thicker gold pen, and I'm going to go over these lines now that they're dry and just see if I can really soften them all. And you can see that that's working. So I'm pleased about that because I would have preferred not to have started the whole bird again. So there's a little tip. If you end up going darker than you, um, well, not darker than you wanted because you wanted it dark, but if you don't like the result after you've gone dark, here's a little tip to bring it back down again. So to keep that consistent, I'll take that round there as well. And if you look on the one here that, you know, was the photocopy, that's what I'd done anyway. So I think, actually, I'm just going to do something very similar to that because I rather liked it. I might not put patterning these two here. But let's see let's see how I get on. First thing I need to do is to get rid of that really dark dark blue, that dark blue. This is the beauty of these posca pen. Well, this is a pilot one, the acrylic pens. Generally speaking, I tend to use the brand posca. I'll just show you I also have moloto as well, which is also a really good brand. One's neither better than the other. Just use what you've got, really. But I'm going to carry on doing this and really knock this back so that I really don't have that deep, deep blue into it. I'll do that. I'll show you what it looks like when I've altered these bits and added a little bit more pattern to it, as well. So here's that one now finished and cut out. I've kept it much simpler than the one above. I haven't added the pattern. Well, not in that section, you know, that I did on the top. I have added the gold pen everywhere. I decided that I wanted to keep that block color blue rather than adding more pattern to it. And as you can see, I haven't added more pattern to the wings, either. So I'm very pleased with that. I'm going to start the next bird, the one that will be facing it. So I'll see you in the next session. I 10. Drawing the Second Bird: I'm starting with my original template again. And what I forgot to mention before was that after I had drawn that template in pencil, if you remember, that's how it ended up. I then outlined it with a black sharpie pen so that it was much easier for me to see when I then put the other paper on top of it to use as light tracing paper. So what I'm going to do now is because I want this bird to face that way, the shape has come through to the back, which is great. I've already altered a little bit of the wing shape and the body shape. So what I've done then is I've traced over that, put another piece of the bleed marker paper over it, traced over that, and then with my HB pencil again and then started to add some decoration to it. Now, as you can see, it's a little bit different to that decoration there. But what I am going to do is use the same colors that I did in that one because I want it to be quite cohesive, even though the patterns might be a little bit different. Rather than you have to watch me do the whole process of this, it's going to be exactly the same principle as doing that one. Although I'm not going to outline it in black or royal blue. I'll do it just like that one with the gold pen. So I will do that and finish it completely and then let you see the final result. 11. Final Designs: Here's a second bird colored in now. I decided also to do a little heart so that when I pop it on the window, that can sit between the two birds, as well. I had a little play by drawing it out first because I wanted to know what sort of pattern to do. And in the end, I decided that the gold pen was too dark. This is me holding it up to the light. So I decided that I would just keep it very, very simple by using a really pale color and just doing some mark making over the edge of it, as you can see here. The next thing now, of course, is to attach it to the window, and it's really simple. I'm just going to use two really small pieces of blue tack. If that's smaller than a P, and I'm going to attach it to the back of the I on each bird like that, and also to the back of where I've got some pattern there. And the reason that you do it there, you know, where you've got some pattern is so that when you hold it up to the light, you actually can't see that blue tech at the back. And because this sits quite flat, as opposed to one that's done with the photocopying paper, excuse me, as it sits quite flat, you really only need to use two pieces, and it'll just sit quite nicely against the window. You don't even need to put one on the wing. So I will use the blue tack for both of the birds, and then I'll just pop a tiny bit at the top, where the heart, you know, where the two shoulders, as it were, meets, so that you'll see a little bit. In fact, let me show you what I mean. You'll see a tiny little bit. So you could make a pattern to disguise this if you wanted to, but I was okay about just doing it. You can just see a bit of the blue tech showing through, which will show more when you hold it up to the light. So if that bothers you, do another little tiny pattern just there that will disguise it. As you can see here, the photocopied one, you know, it really curls up once it's dried completely, which is why if you decide that you want to use it in any further decoration, where it's more of a stand up one, then you'd need to put it, you'd need to glue it onto some card, as I mentioned earlier. So let's have a look now at these three pieces of our pretend stained glass birds as they sit on the window. 12. Viewing The Birds: This is looking at the birds from inside the house to the outside on a reasonably sunny day. This is looking at the birds, again, from the inside to the outside, but at nighttime, and you can see how cheerful they look. But actually, they look even prettier when you're viewing them from outside the house. So the birds are on the inside of the glass, but this is how you're seeing them from the outside. I'll see you in the next session where we look at how we can photocopy the originals and make them into different sizes, and then get them to card so that we can use them as shelf decorations. 13. Creating Shelf Decorations: I've printed off different sizes of the birds, and now I'm just cutting them out. Drawing around, you can see that I've cut them out just slightly beyond the actual outline of the bird itself because that's just a bit easier to glue. And I found some old card in my drawer, which I'm just using. It's, you know, not too thick. It's easy to cut with scissors. If you don't have anything like that, you can just use, like, card stock that you'd make cards out of. So I'm basically just using pritstick, a glue stick. I'm gluing over the back of it. And then I'm sticking it onto that piece of card stock. Like that. Cutting it out with a pair of scissors till I end up with a much thicker one, as you can see. And then I will add a little bit more decoration. I've already done it on that one, probably with the gold pen just to highlight where the gold was originally, it goes a bit dull, of course, you can see when it's on a photocopy. So I'll just go over those a little bit. In fact, I might even do it before I cut them out and highlight them a little bit and then cut them out, and then they'll be ready to go onto my shelf as winter decorations. Here are the decorated birds now on top of the mantel shelf. I like to put something on here each season, and I think that in this sort of dreary winter light that we can sometimes get here in the North of Scotland, that this is just rather nice having these birds on here nestled between the twigs and the berries and the lights, and it all just feels very cheery. I hope you've enjoyed taking this class as much as I've enjoyed creating it. As usual, I would really love to see your work. So if you want to just press the Project tab at the top of the page, that will allow you to upload some of your lovely work there. And if you'd be kind enough to leave a review and let me and others know what you think of the class, then that helps them to decide whether they want to take it or not. Wherever you are in the world, whatever the weather's doing, I hope you take care of yourself. We're having some really mixed weather here in the North of Scotland. One day, it's really hot, the next day, it's snowing. It's really quite bizarre. So please take care of yourself and just try and find time over these winter months to do something creative. Have fun with this technique, create all sorts of different shapes with it, hearts, angels, birds, whatever your imagination can come up with.