Serif Essentials Elegant Bird Journal

If you came here looking for this week's Four Ways Friday, let me begin with an apology.  I have been really tired the past two days and on Wednesday, my creative mojo was nowhere to be found...or maybe it was just slightly visible.  I did manage to start on creating this bird on Wednesday, using the Elegant Bird Bigz Die, some gesso and some modeling paste with a stencil...

And that was as far as I got...  Thursday morning I spent quite a bit of time contemplating the bird.  He got painted with a pearlized paint and then he sat some more.  Next he found his way onto a piece of mat board that I had gotten from my aunt a few years ago.  My aunt owns a frame shop and had given me quite a few mat board scraps one year when I visited her at the store.  Once the bird was against the mat board some ideas started to flow.  Of course, none of those ideas were remotely concerned with Four Ways Friday.  So I decided to go where my creativity was taking me and focus on the bird rather than on Four Ways Friday.  So instead of four ways to use something, I'm going to share with you one way to use a bird that you gesso, stencil and paint :)

I decided to make the bird and the mat board into a journal! :)  Here is a side view...

The inside pages of the journal were made from a stack of yellow paper that came out of an estate sale.  I cut the pages down to size (just under 8"x10") and then punched holes using my bind-it-all.  I punched holes in the mat board front cover and used a heavy chipboard for the back cover.  Once the book was bound with a spiral binding, I began to decorate the cover.  The mat board had come with the fabric on it, so I just built things up from there.  I adhered the bird and added some buttons that I had in my button box.  I then die cut some chipboard with the Serif Essentials dies and painted the letters with pearlized paint.  The letters, buttons and bird were adhered to the cover of the journal with hot glue.  Next came all of the bows on the spiral binding!  I used Always Artichoke seam binding, Whisper White satin ribbon, Whisper White taffeta ribbon, Whisper White grosgrain ribbon, Whisper White organza ribbon and some Chantilly crochet trim.  Finally I added a few jewelry tags that I stamped with a retired Stampin' Up! set and Chocolate Chip ink.
I hope you don't mind the departure from Four Ways Friday and I hope this project inspires you to follow your creativity where it takes you!  Wishing you a wonderfully creative and peaceful weekend!!!!!