Painted Bluebird Slate
- By Joan
- May 6, 2018
- 2 Comments
I got a call from my sister last week. She had a project for me. Since I am always up for a new project, especially one that I don’t have to think of myself, I was all ears. Her idea was a “Welcome to Bluebird Hill” sign for her home. Bluebirds were always my mom’s favorite bird, she had bluebird houses to welcome the little guys and now my sister is following in her footsteps and she wanted a sign.
She was ready for me, she even stole a slate from my brother and was hoping I was up to the task. Sounds like fun to me.
Well, I hadn’t seen her, but when I was cleaning off my super messy workbench I found a slate lying in the clutter. I could get started right away and I could surprise her and she could return the purloined slate.
I never trust my own freehand and I’m absolutely sure my lettering won’t be centered or I’ll run off the end of the page so I always set up my projects on Microsoft Publisher. My slate was 12″x 19″ so that’s the size I plugged in to my new project. I found the cute little bluebird here and the font for the lettering is Brush Script MT.
A page size of 12″ x 19″ will print out on 4 sheets of paper which will have to be trimmed and taped back together.
Since I’m transferring onto slate, a dark surface, I used white chalk on the back of my picture to give myself a transfer medium.
Go over the outline of your image with a pen to transfer the chalk to the slate.
It’s not a great transfer since the slate is somewhat uneven and rough but it is just enough to give me an outline for painting and anything is better than me doing something freehand.
I painted the entire bluebird white so that I would have a nice base to paint on.
My entire color palette. A royal blue, a greyish blue, a rust color, black and white.
A small dish holds my paint. Don’t worry it cleans up easily.
Also don’t worry if your bird looks kind of sad. This is always the point where I start doubting my painting abilities. Keep adding layers until you like what you see. You can always paint over any areas you don’t like.
Even that sad bird above ended up pretty good.
After the bluebird, the lettering is easy. Use a small brush or paint pen.
If your slate is going to be outdoors, finish off with several layers of spray polyurethane.
I got lucky with the location of one of the holes in the slate..it gets lost in the beak.
I delivered it to her this past weekend and I think she was a little surprised but she seemed to love it. She even had a nail from a past sign all ready for hanging.
Stay inspired and have a great week.
Shared at Metamorphosis Monday,
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A perfect slate piece. Beautifully done! Your sister must LOVE it.
That turned out so cute!