300th Post Birds & Books Give Away Winners and Other Fun Stuff.....

"When nature made the blue~bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast."

~John Burroughs~(image source)

I so appreciate each and every one of you who visit here at Quill Cottage. Thank you for your sweet comments. Every one of you is a winner in my book! Since I am unable to send everyone a gift I have included the following images for use in your artwork.

I love this colorful cheerful vintage greeting card!Doesn't this make you want to get out your crayons? I am thinking about using portions of this image to transfer to white cotton tea towels and stitch the outlines in red.I love all these colorful birds on one sheet. This is from an old children's dictionary.Breakfast with the birds!A sweet little song sparrow from an old bird book!A tree full of birds graces this storybook page!
Just right click on the image and select "save image as" on your pop up menu and the image will be saved to your computer. Enjoy!

Congratulations to the following winners of my Birds & Books 300th Post celebration give away:

"Sweet Tweet" Bird Journal winner ~ Lori of Before the Stroke of Midnight!Mixed Media Nature Collage winner ~ Katie of Ragamuffin Gal!Altered Golden Book Cover winner ~ Jodie of Everything Vintage!

Please email me your name and mailing address information so I can get your goodies to you! Thank to all who played along. Special thanks goes out to those who helped to spread the word for this give away: (Just click on the highlighted blog title to visit each of these lovely and inspiring blogs. If I left anyone out who posted on this give away, please let me know and I will promptly add your link to the visiting list.)

Before the Stroke of Midnight
Lady Farmer Parables
Decor to Adore
Over the Fence
PEA's Corner
Simple Pleasures

After finishing the above projects I had a lot of odd snips and rips of paper left over. While visiting Beth of Gathering Dust I came across a fantastic idea for using up those odd scraps. Beth suggested that you keep a glue stick and a piece of card stock handy while working on your project. When your work area starts to get cluttered with scraps begin to glue them onto the card stock.

I worked in a haphazard fashion like this:Beth's was so much neater, her papers were more squares or larger pieces. When you are finished you will have a what looks like a bit of a mess like this:If you have a tag punch, punch out tag shapes, if not, just cut with a scissor in the desired tag shape of any size you wish. I cut mine into three large rectangles. Let the fun begin and embellish away! Here is the set of sweet tweet tags I made with my leftover paper:

I still have to add some small real twigs under the birds feet and then I think these will be finished.

Beth also had another brilliant idea ~ save your old phone book. When spreading glue open the phone book and lay your paper or image face down, spread the glue on the back of the image, then lift the paper or image and stick to your project. Simply flip or rip out the used phone book page and you will have a clean surface for gluing without the mess! This keeps your work surface clean and neat. I have even used this idea with small items requiring spray adhesive. Thanks Beth for sharing such great ideas!

I know I am behind on visiting around in blog land and I hope to get by to see all of you soon. We are still in the throws of our pond project and closing in on the finish. I have been working between rain showers to get what I can done while still trying to maintain my daily routine. I have been so tired in the evenings I have not even turned on the computer to visit. I can't wait to catch up with all of you and to show you the finished project!

I hope you all have a wonderful Monday!

Blessings,
Miss Sandy