Art Journal to Pallet Wood Art

In the spring, I asked my kids to drag a wood pallet home from a trash pile and then I asked my husband to cut it into scraps that I could use for art projects .... they all thought I had gone a little nuts.  (Well, it probably wasn't the best quality wood pallet ... but hey, free canvas right??)  The wood scraps have sat and sat in my pile, waiting.  And finally I took a couple of them and glued them together and used them to work on.  I took a fun page from an art journal and recreated the piece onto the pallet wood.  I had so much fun and got SO many splinters. Note - you just cannot finger paint on rough wood without consequences! (Art lesson for the day!)

So here she is - my bird on pallet wood!

Scrap wood - really rough and dirty!!

I used Carpenter's wood glue to stick these bad boys together!

Then I played around with inks, sprays and Archival Ink to see what would stick out ...  I knew I needed the background to be waterproof.  It was a lot of fun to just spray away.  I actually took the sprayers out of the spray bottles and put them right into straight-up ink bottles - MESSY!! (But fun!)

This is where I stopped playing and realized it was a little bit crazier than I really needed it to be.  Then I lightly painted a whitewash over the top - which I regretted!  The wood soaked up that white paint like a thirsty sponge and I actually lost too much color.  So after I had placed my paper pieces - I had to redo some of the background!

I took out my paper supplies ... the tree is brown paper bag.  The bird and leaves are scrap paper.  The nest is a Linnie Blooms canvas sun that I took a little bit off the top to make the nest.  Then there is a paint, doodles and some rub-on stickers! 

And here is the journal page with the final ... I don't think it turned out too badly!!   I kinda love this little bird!!