Making Fancy Birds from Everyday Papers: Simple, Easy Collage for Beginners

1. Introduction Video: Making fancy birds from everyday papers is a beginners class where I show you how I use collage to make too fancy bird pictures. Hi, I'm Helen and I'm a lifelong artists and maker from the UK. And I believe that creativity isn't all about fancy materials and the latest equipment. I believe that we can all create with everyday, simple, easily found materials. My work has always stemmed from the love of materials and processes, and collage and assemblage have always been my favorite ways of working. Collage and assemblage of always featured in my work. And I love using materials that other people perhaps wouldn't consider so unusual materials. So quite a lot of my canvases have got unusual found objects buried in them. I find that using abstract painted papers and liberating way to work. When I'm painting the papers, I'm not worried about the end result. I'm just having fun putting paint on paper. I enjoyed the happenstance and the happy accidents. In this class, I'll show you my process of using collage to make too fancy bird pictures. I discussed the materials I use, show you alternatives that you can experiment with. I provide templates to guide you and there's an information pack for your reference. I would really love it for you to come along and join me to make some collaged fancy birds. Let's get cutting and sticking. 2. Project Video: In this class we'll be covering two projects. So we're gonna be making too fancy birds, one using painted papers and the other one using found papers from magazines. I chose this project because I feel that for some of us, it's important that we step away from the screen and we need to remind ourselves we can make art, we can create with easy everyday materials. And the cutting and sticking can be fun. I loved the happenstance of the process, and I love the way the collage and the characters evolve. The first step is that we need to go on a bit of a hunt, a scavenger hunt around the house and find some papers that we can use to collage with. These papers can be painted so you can have fun with the kids paints or some felt pens or just you can use them exactly as they are. We need to look at colors that we want to use and the shapes that we need. And finally, we'll be adding details to your characters will break down the birds into basic shapes that we can easily cut out and fit together to make our fancy birds. You'll find that process along the way. You, your fancy boats. Each one will be unique and have its own character. And that's the fun of it. Don't forget to post your pictures along the way. Show me what you've been making. I'd love to see them. Because like I said, every everyone is going to be different. There's not gonna be any one looks can make a fancy bowed like you or collage like you because they don't have the same resources. They're not cutting in the same way. They're not using the paint, the colors and the paints in that same way. So each individual thing that you make will be unique to you. And that's exciting. If you'd like any guidance and feedback. I'm here and happy to help. So let's get started. Let's make some fancy birds. 3. Papers to Paint on.: I want to chat about paper, and I must admit I'm a bit of a hoarder for paper, for collage. I have used magazine papers, newspapers found papers. I've used junk mail, anything that's got color or texture on it. At the moment, my current collage practice is using painted papers. I've got together a little bit of a collection of papers. I've obviously painted here, or they've got mark making of some sort. I just thought I'd show you exactly what they are. This one here is random painted blue, abstract with a pink bit of white. It's already got a tear on it because it's newspaper. Newspaper is fabulous because this is acrylic paint. Acrylic paint will help to stabilize the newspaper as well. But you get a different quality. You get a slight crinkle in the record to it. But when you come to paste it, because it's a slightly more flimsy paper. It's easier to work with and your layers are thinner. This one is actually probably newsprint, but it's packing paper. So this came in a parcel or it may have been left over from when I moved or that sort of thing. Again, it's got no text underneath or anything to show through when you paint on top. But it's a bit more flimsy and it does the recoloring up and crinkles so you get a texture with your paper as well. So if newsprint say if all you're packing paper, this was an interesting one. So this is actually died paper. So this, I made some die by collecting the fallen petals from peonies. And these were actually read peonies. But when you save them, soak them in water, boil them to make the die. You get this purple. So these, these are actually fragments of the fibers, but this is dyed paper as opposed to painted paper. But this is written probably here. It's a little bit firmer. And this is lining papers, so this is wallpaper that you buy. It's the cheapest wallpaper that you can buy it on a real. And it's lining paper that you would put on the wall to then paint onto. And this is a really, really lovely surface to paint on. It's a lovely surface to use for dying. It's very absorbent, dries, nice and flat. And it's very cheap. And it is because it's on a roll, you can cut it, it's long or short as you want. A role of lining paper is a good thing to have in your stash. This one is a book that I picked up from a charity shop. It's an old encyclopedia. And I was doing some printing. And these, this is some of the pages that I practiced the printout on. So this is just some scrap paper that I had leftover from bringing the text shows through. And that adds another quality. This one, as you can see, it is manuscript paper. This is music from, again from a charity shop. And as you can see when you paint onto it, I've scraped as well. I've made marks. You can see some of the music showing through. So you've got a different quality of mark-making underneath your paint. And here's another one I used. This time I've painted with two colors. I've painted some yellow and probably painted some blue. I've got yellow showing through and I've got green sharing through. This one is, this is actually quality paper. So this is like cartridge paper. I was having a practice with doing some art. The painting, the prints didn't work out well. So I actually cut them down into A4 pieces of paper. And so I've got collection of these which were old bits of artwork that didn't quite go right. This one is an interesting one. So this is an out-of-date local magazine, parish magazine. And this comes through the door every I don't I think we have one about every quarter. I take my two pieces, I take the center staples out and I use them for painted papers. That's another one that you can use. Here's another old book from a charity shop. This one is a gardening encyclopedia telling you all sorts of different, about different plants. And so I've got painted on this old book paper is, is nice. It's got a rough surface to it. So it's nice and absorbent. It dries nice and flat. And you've got the text showing through as well. So that's a useful one to have. This one is a pack of news print paper that I bought years ago. And, um, so this is another flimsy piece of paper. You could use either side. I quite like that muted side. Obviously that's the side I have painted. And that's what we'll use in my collage. Now you have it as a collection of different papers and some ideas as to what papers to start saving, to paint on or to use as collage. 4. Finding Colours - Magazine Pages: So here I've got a selection of torn out magazine pages that may be useful to put in my stash for collaging. So this, as you can see his front page of a magazine. And I like this because it's a close-up of some watercolor. And although I wouldn't use this as a, as a complete image, there are elements as textures and details and, um, and I think I would probably cut those patches out and use those. So those are the elements I'm looking for here. In fact, I might just grab my scissors and do exactly that. I'm going to cut the words out. And then I'm left with just an abstract color blocks that I can use to call our SH wave. This one got my attention because it's a photograph. It's very obviously a photograph of some fireworks. And although I wouldn't want the people, I'm liking this patch up here. I think I'm just going to cut this out. Save these bits. Images of textiles is always useful to have. You wouldn't want it to look like. So for the small details, patterns of textiles, it's always useful to keep in your stash. This photograph. I've got my attention because if the color is basically, but also you've got lots of texture in these, in these elements here. You've got a strip of texture here. You've got the water texture, but you've also got lovely, lovely, big color blocks. So again, I'm going to just cut the texts way. So I'm not distracted by what the words are saying. And I'm just looking at the images as abstract forms. The people out here as well, because I don't want people in my corner. She's probably don't even really want fielding. Those are elements that I could use. It's nice stripes happening here. So that would be useful. Another landscape image, lovely detail on the sky there, lots of color there, and lots of color in on this, on this Heather. That would always be useful. Start looking at images from a color block. Interview. Start and collection of images that you could use. As I'm even going to keep that strip at the bottom there that you could use as abstract shapes and colors. And this one, again, I was, I was drawn to the close-up nature of this image, but also the colors. So I'm going to just cut those words and use this in my stash as well. So you can easily start collecting images from magazines today. 5. Other Materials and Equipment: The things we're going to need to make our fancy birds, or we need a piece of paper to glow onto. So this is a square piece of white. It's actually our paper, but you could use anything you like from envelope paper to copy paper. Anything that you want to use as a base paper, you need a pair of scissors. I've got couple of pens here, so I've got a thick sharpie pen and a finer black liner. Both of those are permanent marker so they work on, on shiny paper and over paint as well. We're going to need some glue. I very often use a glue stick or I will use PVA. This is the candidate into a jar because I buy my PVA in large quantities. So this is just a jam jar that I've kept my clue in. I'm going to use PVA. You're going to need a brush of some sort. This is just a kid's paintbrush. And I popped put some water in so you can keep that paintbrush moist. And so it doesn't dry out. Whenever you're doing any craft or activities, it's always useful to have some more pop available. So there we go. So that's us and we're all ready to start making our fancy birds. 6. A Flip Through the Templates: I've included within the supplemental material, I've included a template pack. And so I'm just going to run through what the template pack is. You've got an eight-page PDF document that you can print out. And I have drawn two sets of fancy birds. They are once we've beaks open and once with beaks closed. So with H fancy bird, you have got the separate shapes and where they would go on the body. So the separate shapes and the way they would go with the beak closed, with the beak open. Same again, separate shapes and where they are on the body. You can use the templates in various different ways. You can cut out all the individual shapes. Use them to draw around on your Found paper, your painted paper, and then stick them onto your base paper. You can, if you want to be a little bit more, work with happenstance, you can cut the shapes out, a stick them onto the reverse of some Found paper before cutting them out. So you haven't really got a clear idea of what that image is going to look like before you cut it out. So it's a little bit of an experiment and find your own way. The other thing I've got here is I've done the four fancy birds as individual images for different landscape formations. And you can, if you wanted to, you could use this as the base to then stick or collage your elements onto. You could, if you wanted to, other ideas or coloring, doodling, you could actually draw on here. I wouldn't say paint depending on your printer because obviously when you get any printed out home printed out paper, you, you do run the risk of smudging the ink. But felt pens, crayons work very well. So you could, you could color in, you could do it, or you could do illustrations within those shapes, cut them out and stick them together. So I hope they're going to be useful. And it just gives you a bit of a guideline as to what sorts of shapes that you can use to put together a fancy bird. I hope you have fun making them. I'd love to see the results. So please share them on the relevant pages and tag me on Instagram. If you make any of these fancy birds, that would be great. 7. Cutting the Shapes for the Painted Paper Bird: So before we start gluing, we need to decide what shapes we're going to cut out and what papers we're going to use. So using these fancy birds as a template, I have itemized the different shape elements. So we've got a basic body shape. What a basic wing shape, tail shape, head feathers shape, beak, and some feet. As you can see, the eyes and the feet and the beak I've drawn in afterwards. So these append on afterwards. If you don't have a white pen, now I have a white posca pen and other permanent marker which I use for the eyes. If you don't have that, you can always collage your eyes as well. So finding some white paper and then putting your Blackboard or however you like. So we're going to decide what we're going to use for what shapes. So I've put together a collection of scraps of painted papers. So these are from other projects. So I'm thinking, okay, so the two basic shapes that we're looking for, first of all, other body and the wings. So I'm quite liking that one. So I'm thinking I'm going to use that one for the body. And then it's a case of what do I want the blue wing? Or do I want to go some contrast? For cutting out, I tend not to use templates, although I've drawn these out. And you could use them as a template, I tend to just cut. I find that this is much more liberating and you get an element of happenstance. And that's when, that's when the character evolve. So these body shapes, they're not all the same. This one is a bit more elongated and these ones in their heads are a little bit more upright. So just by cutting the shape, the character of the bird creates itself. So you want to just have a bit of an idea as to how big that bird is going to be. And actually I might just make one bird in the middle of this piece of paper because this block of color sits quite nicely in the middle of that piece of paper. Next thing to do is to decide which way your bird is going to be facing. I think my bird is going to be the beacuse onto the left-hand side. And let's just go for it. I'm just going to roughly cut my body shape and then see if I like it. And if I don't like it, I can cut another one. I can adapt to it. So as you can see, it's basically, you're looking for an L shape. And with a bit more of a point for the tail, bit more rounded for the head. I'm quite happy with that. That is gonna be my basic body shape. But the next thing we're gonna do is decide on the wing and quiet night, but I quite like that. Do I want two contrasting wing? So I'm going to cut a wing shape in paper. The wing shape isn't a tear shape piece of paper. This one actually, I've got a point at both ends. So it depends. You can have it rounded at one end and pointed at the other. For this one sits a little bit more on top and it's a bit more pointed. So let's cut a rounded one to start off with because I can always change it. So the wing needs to be about that long. That's going to be my size. And I'm just gonna catch it. Just going to cut and see what happens. The beauty of using newspaper. You're painting papers are found paper is that it's not precious, precious at all. The other thing I'm now going to need to do is tail feathers. Now the tail feathers sticking out quite a long way here, but I don't have too much room on this one. So I could either cut my body down a little bit or in fact, I might just trim his belly, that's the breast a little bit. A little bit more like a duck. Yeah, I like that a bit better. Now, the beauty is you can adapt as you go along. But of course, once you've cut it, you've got it's done. You can't put that back other than sticking on another piece. So we could either have the tail feathers going up or we can have some shorter tail feathers going out. Let's just cut and C, tail feathers you can either cut out, you can cut them how you want. I can either cut them out as individual segments or I can cut them out like I've drawn this one here is one segment. And I think that's what I'm gonna do to start off with, I'm going to do one segment. So I'm going to cut a rounded triangle. And then I'm going to cut into that to make the feather pieces. And I find it easier to do it backwards and forwards like this. I'm going cutting in, turning over and cutting around and going in. So there's my tail. So we've got the beginnings of a collage bird. So we're going to cut some head feathers. I'm going to cut a wide rounded triangle. And then again in to make the feather shape. There's my head feathers. I'm not liking that one. I think that's too big. So I'm just going to trim him down a little bit more pleasing to me. I'm wondering now as well whether they wing is just a little bit too big. So I'm just going to trim that. So there we are. There's the basics of halberd and now we need to blew it. 8. Glueing the Painted Paper Bird: We're ready to glue the paper collage bird, this is the painted papers. So I'm going to use glue stick with this 1. First of all, I'm just going to put some glue on the bottom of the head feathers and nothing's attached yet. Pace paper. I'm just going to attach the head feathers to the bird. I'm going to do the same again with the tail feathers. So just put a little bit of glue at the bottom. The tail feathers. As you can see, I'm using a cover from a magazine as my mat. That's fine. So it's been glued on lots of times. But then when the glue is dry, you can use it again. And I'm going to put my going on. So I'm going to put some glue on the wind and state that on there. Now with glue stick you can, there is a little bit of wiggle room. You can move and slide around a little bit. So my bird is essentially all together, but not attached to the base paper. So now I'm going to glue it all on. Being very careful with the the feathers, that wing feathers and the head feathers. It's useful just to hold the base of it so you don't break any. If you do break any, you can very carefully glue them all back in place and your bird on the paper and press down. Let's see, kitchen paper here, which there's the beginning of our painted papers collage bird. 9. Final Flourish for the Painted Paper Bird: We've got our collage bird, and now we're going to start adding the details for the painted paper one, I am going to add drawn on details. So this one I've added details to the feathers on the head to tail and the wing. And I've also done some, some zig-zags on the belly here. I've got a drawn on beak, a drawn on I and Syndrome on legs. So that's what we're gonna do with this one. So I'm going to use two pens. I may use a third one. So the pens I've got, I've got a Sharpie. I've got a uni pin pen in 0.8. And I've also got a Posca pen in white. As you can hear me. Shaking, the posca pens need a shakeup first and before I draw onto. But I just want to make sure that it's working. So give it a little press, makes sure that the ink is running smoothly. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to draw the eye on the bird. So as you can see from this one, and from these ones, the eye is pretty much in the middle, or I've even got them a little further back than the front of the bird. So I'm going to draw the white of the eye first of all, and then I'm just going to leave that to dry. Let's just go for it. This is where the characters will come alive. I may just leave that center blank so I can do the black in there. So that is going to be at the moment the center of my eye. So we're going to leave that to dry. What I'm gonna do, I think I'm going to draw in everything else with uni pin. If I need to fix them the lines up, then I'll go over with the sharpie. We need a beak. Now I haven't got too much room here to have a long beak. So I'm going to have a bit of a shorter one. So my beaks are coming pretty much a bit level, just a little bit down from the, from the eye. So I'm gonna take my beak to the, just to the edge of the paper. And it's gonna be a bit of a skinny pointed down one. And if I liked the look of that, then I'll just color it in. If I want a little bit thicker than I can do. So I'm just going to color it in like this. And already just by adding that little curvy beak, we're getting a bit of a character coming through. We go That looks a bit like a bird already. Legs. I've got two legs here and I've got three toes for want of a better word, coming forward and a little bit going backwards. I'm just going do two simple legs to start off with 12. And then I can add onto them. So I'm going to have 3123 and then 1123. And then one. I'm going to thicken those legs up a little bit. So maybe just sort of thick lines up a little bit on the fate. Just draw these in a little bit thicker. Again. That just evolves as we go. The ankles need to be a little bit thicker to support the bird. I'm going to do two little triangles at the top of the legs to indicate where it joins onto the body. And very carefully just come down those legs and make those legs just a little bit thicker. They don't have to be accurate unless you want to make them accurate. This is stylized bird and can be fun and as wonky as you like. So there we go. There's my bird standing on two legs. I'm going to start doing some details on the feathers. Here. I've just got done a center line just with some indications of the feathers. I'm going to do that on the tail. A central line coming up. Each one of those tail feathers. Then just do. Some indication of some tail feathers. You can absolutely leave this and not put any detail. If that's what you would like. Your bird, you make it how you want. This one here with the two birds. I haven't got any details on any of the feathers on the wings or anything. I've just left it completely. Painted papers are obviously I've done the eyes and the beak and the legs bow. So either way you can do it either way. But I just thought I'd show you how I just put a little bit of detail on. Again, it's stylized. It can be however you want. You can make it really fancy and put all sorts of doodles, doodles on. You can do flower shapes, you can do whatever you want to make your bird as fancy as you would like. Then doodles on it or anything. I'm gonna do the head now but the head feathers. So again, drawing a center line and then just some indication of the feathers. So I haven't actually used the Sharpie pen at all. Yeah, that's fine. The wing feathers. I've done elongated ovals on this one, but I think I might just do just some lines with two, match these feathers here. Okay, It looks like it's gonna be four. Then I'm just gonna do some, add some more if you want. Then I'm just going to do some simple triangles. Just to indicate the breast feathers. She did a zigzag line on the other one. Now I'm going to do for this one, I'm just doing some simple viz. Can be U-shaped, so it can be V shapes. And there we go. I can see that my eye is dry now. So I'm going to put a pupil. So I'm just going to fill in the center with black. And I'm just going to outline it with black as well. I'm just going around a few times. Just to define that some more. I think I'm quite happy with that. I'm quite happy to leave that and say that that is my painted paper collage. Bird. 10. Cutting the Shapes for the Magazine Bird: I'm going to do a fancy bird using the magazine papers instead of painted papers. These are actually painted papers. But I'm going to do on with, they found papers that we cut out from the magazine earlier on to know what shapes with doing, I have traced the basic elements on here. We're looking for basic body shape, a basic wing shape, our basic tail shape, basic head feather shape. And then you can either cut off and cut a beak on an eye and legs, or you can draw these elements on afterwards. This piece of paper we need quite a big image to use for the main body shape. So I'm thinking, I quite like this. What is haver on a hillside? I'm quite liking that. So that's what I'm going to use for my basic shape. Although these are provided as guidelines and you can use them as templates, I prefer to cut these shapes, these elements out free hand because that's where the characters of the birds evolve. And as you can see by these ones, each one of these body shapes is slightly different. This one is a little bit more elongated. This one is a bit more city up, and this one is heads down a little bit lower. So did the characters evolve from the cutting? And this is what I find liberating about using found papers and painted papers to create. I'm not tied to the big decision of making the mark on the paper and sticking to it. So I need a basic body shape. I think it's gonna be about that long. And the head is probably going to probably just keep it at the height of the head over there. I'm going to just cut it out and we'll see how it goes. The shape for the fancy birds, I make a curvy L-shape. So just keep trimming away until you get the shape that you like that works for you. And I'm going to cut that back down a little bit more and make the neck a little bit longer. Now we've got a skinny one, then that's fine. That's fine. I'm going to leave it at that, not play with it anymore. So the next thing we need to do is we need to look at the wing shape. So I can either keep same sorts of colors from that same image, but just a different section. Or I can cut an element from a different look at that. That would make a lovely weighing, wouldn't it? From a different image. And I'm going to do exactly that. So I'm going to talk a wing out of here. So just perfect round. I've heard a little bit more pointy. Round it a bit shorter. And that's gonna be my wing. So I've got some petal shapes here. So I'm going to just try cutting around those. I'm seeing whether we like that as a as a head feathers. No. I'm now going to just cut the head feathers. So I'm just going to cut down and cut some head feathers out. If this shape, for me, collage is just playing and experimenting and just working out door like this. No. Okay. What am I going to do? And it's just the freedom to play. And because you're using non precious materials, it, it takes the pressure off. This is just scrap paper that you would have put in the recycling. And why has come through come through the door free. And we're making something from nothing. I'm going to leave that as my head on my on my wing. So I now need to make a tail. I'm going to use that shape. There is the tail a bit. I'm going to cut some tail feathers into here. I had a bit of a preconceived idea as to what I wanted to make. I had no vision in my head as to what this might look like or how it's going to work together. I'm thinking that's going use a little bit pointy Now. That's the beginning of my found papers. Fancy bird. 11. Glueing the Magazine Paper Bird: Let's get gluing. I'm going to use PVA. So I've got some kitchen paper. I've got my kinda what I use Mr. Gluing mat. So it's the cover of a pad of paper. And as you can, probably, it's been glued on lots of times, but that's my, my glowing mat. You can also use an old magazine and turn the pages over as you go. So we're gonna get ready to glue. I don't want to do is to make this paper too wet. I'm just going to fold up a piece of kitchen paper there. And so with a wet brush. Just going to dab that a little bit. I don't want it too sticky, but I don't want it too wet. And I'm just going to paste on the back of my shape here. Now, my method is used. The glue that you've got. This can make it quite wet, but don't worry. Now I've left no glue at the top and the bottom. Four. Then adding on my tile. Hello. I'm just going to smooth it onto the paper. Because it goes it's quite wet. You can get some records and wrinkles and that's fine. So as you can see, these are lifted. And I'm just going to decide where I'm going to put my head feathers and put some glue on those. And just put those on there. Then I can put some glue on the back of this here. Then placed down on top. So I can do the same again with my tail feathers. You could attach the tail to the body before you actually put it onto the backing board. Whatever works for you is the best way to do it. It may be that you you change your method as you go along. Can't go there because that's a little bit off of the edge. So I got to work quickly just to pick it up and replace it. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just going to glue. I've got an n. I'm going to cut that last tale for the two fit because we're using the magazine paper, paper. I'm getting a little bit of a pull up of the image that's underneath. You guy. Now I've just snipped his tail feathers. That's two it has, you can see using PVA, it is a little bit, it makes the paper a little bit record for drawing. It's a good idea to put it under some Andhra heavyweight. I'm just going to attach the wing on and then I think I'll just leave it to dry before I add any more details. Going on. Doesn't matter. Doesn't really matter where it is. So that is my collaged bird. 12. Final Flourish for the Magazine Paper Bird - part 1: This is the magazine paper collage bird. So it's all dry. And I fought for this one. I would continue with the magazine paper and actually add the detail by collaging on my glue. Matt. I've got a glue stick, I've got some tissue. The first thing we need to do is we need to make an I. So the easiest thing to do is to find this magazine paper. And I've just got a hole punch. I'm just going to punch a hole and see whether I like the size of that as an I or whether that needs to be a bit bigger. I think that's fine. I think we are the hole punch is going to be too big, so I'm going to leave it at that. I will want to put that onto some black black leggings, kid. Okay. So that's what I'm going to use for the outside of my so I'm going to glue the white of the eye on. And then I'm going to cut around the outside of it just to make the eyes a little bit bigger. So that is going to be my eye. I think if I am going to cheat and I will be able to put a black dot in the center of the eye. So we're going to just pop that in place on there. Now. I've got my piece of black. Can I make a beak out of it? Of course I can make a beak out of it. I'm just going to cut curvy beak and see where that takes us. Do I like that? I do quite like that. So I'm going to leave that exactly as is. Obviously, you can have several attempts. You can try a trial and error and see what pleases you. Doesn't have to be black, you don't have to have black details. You can go for any color you want. That is going to be my beak. The next thing we need to do is we need to make some legs and some feet. Now I'm wondering, do I want to have them the same color as the rest of the bird? I could do or do I use those legs there? I could do the same magazine. I have found a picture of the GLA. So I'm going to use that as the legs and see whether I can fashion a couple of feet and legs from there. I'm gonna just kinda in half because I've got space for two legs. I'm just going to just go for it. My legs are going to be spade shaped to start off with. I'm just going to cut in. There's some triangles. And see whether I like that. I'm going to cut the white off. I might make those legs shorter. So that's gonna be the first one. I'm going to do the same again with the second bit of a spade shape. Then catching some triangles to make the toes. So this one's got a little bit of work writing on it. So I'm gonna make that shorter. So that is going to be the leg length of my birth. And obviously you can, you can then arrange your legs to be however you like and place them, however, is pleasing to you. Now these bits are a little bit fragile. So you do have to be careful gluing. It may be that once you start doing collage details like this, it may be that you won't find a pair of tweezers, will have a cocktail stick or a, I've got a bamboo skewer. One of my toes have come off. But anyway, I'm still going to carry on. And I'm going to place the Lego. And then I've got my other Tau, which is going to go into that space there. And I'm just going to nudge it in place and press it down. Now I can leave it at bat if I like. I'm actually going to put a dot for an I just tested on there to see whether or not that bleeds. I don't think it will. So I'm just gonna do a little circle for an eye. And you can make that as big as you want. So the question is now, how do we want to put any more details on the bird? 13. Final Flourish for the Magazine Paper Bird - part 2: So I think I might just cut some elongated feather shapes to go on the wing. So I'm basically just going to cut some lengths. And then I can cut them to size and shape. Once they're in place. This is from the original picture that made up the body of the bird. So you could just have strips along like that. And that is, I think what I'm gonna do, I think what I might do is glue that 1 first. So we do the center 1 first column is making it up as you go along. And like I've said before, the fact that it is non precious, papers takes the pressure off of getting it wrong. You can be as simple or as on a tissue. Like keeping your colors from the same palette does help to unify the image. If you remember, these are all from two photographs. So we've got the picture of the haver, then we've got the picture of the flowers. And I'm now putting the more Heather details on top of the flowers. For the wings. We could go one step further and do some tail feathers coming off of here. That might be quite nice. So I've got five tail feathers there. I'm going to make two out of this one. And the tail feathers it in a beat. A little center strip of color. Growing up. 12345. I'm just going to make that one a little bit thinner and a little bit more rounded. Now, this is where a scalpel can come in handy. I've got my scalpel or you could use a craft knife. And what we're gonna do is actually cut on the fly. So what you do is just blue and then place it in place. And then with the craft knife where you want to, if you just gently hold on there, you can tear it in place so you don't have to cut and know exactly where you're going to need to make that cut. So I'm just gonna do some more tail feathers like that. Actually gives you a bit more non gluey bit to hold onto. So I'm gonna just should we go there? Let's go there. So we're just going to put it down in place. Decide where you want to catch it. I'm not putting too much pressure on here, but it is, the blade is pointing down. Obviously you don't want to cut the rest of the image. I'm just going to go there. So I'm going against the edge of the body. Good enough glue on the edge of the body, press it down and you basically tearing against the blade. Sometimes be useful to have either a wet wipe or a damp flannel nearby when you're doing collage like this because your fingers do get very sticky. And instead of jumping up and having to wash your hands all the time it is might be an idea to just give them a wipe every now and again. Obviously if you're working with children, you want to be careful with your craft knife that blends in actually quite nicely. So I'm not even going to cut that bottom one. I'm just going to put a little bit more glue on it and let that sit just going over the body a little bit. Those are my tail feathers. And I'm going to do exactly the same with the head feathers, but I'm going to use this slightly different bit of haver. Again. I'm just going to cut some skinny kind of feather shapes and see what they looked like. Just glue those. I keep my scalpel in an eraser to keep them safe and sound like poking myself with it. If you've got a craft knife, obviously, these retractable. So there's my fancy bird. 14. The Final Birds and Three More: So these are the collages that we've made. This was the first one using the painted papers. Then we've got the magazine paper one. But I wanted to just show you some other papers that I have played with to make small little collage birds. The first one is, this is using envelope paper. As you can see, I've used the blue from the inside of the envelope. So he's a white envelopes with the blue paper patterns inside. So I thought that was quite a cute little bird. This one is using old book paper. So it gives a nice beige color book paper. You can find old books in junk shops, charity shops, thrift stores, or even in your own home. Books are broken, damaged, you don't want anymore. You can cut up and use those as paper for collaging, of orientating the texts and in different ways to add more interest to the piece. So that's just using book paper. And the final one I've got here is just using regular newspaper. This was from TV section on the newspaper. So I've got two different colors of paper. So this is quite a bit more of a pink tinge to it. And this one is the regular text because newspaper comes in columns. What I did was I cut several columns up. So there's a very, there's a wavy edge to this cut. And I have just arranged three columns, glued those together before cutting out the body shape. Then cut out the wing and the tail and the head feathers shape. On this one I've added extra detailing on with a black liner. So these are three more birds that can be created using found papers. 15. CONCLUSION: Wow, How did you get on? I'd like to thank you and congratulate you for coming all the way through the process with me. And I hope you've enjoyed making your fancy birds and found lots of lots of inspiration around the house and lots of materials that you can create with. So we've reminded ourselves that it can be fun and cutting in sticking, that we don't need to be in front of the screen. And that we don't need to have fancy materials and expensive equipment to make art. Don't forget to post your pictures of all you're makes. I'd love to see them. And please follow me on Skillshare and leave a review. You can find me on Instagram. So come and check out some of the work that I posted there. If there's one thing that I hope you take away from this class is that you are never too old to have fun cutting and sticking.