Free as a Bird Cards Inspired by Newport Mansions Canaries

Today’s project involves a little traveling.  Over the weekend, I visited two Newport Mansions: Marble House and The Breakers.  My niece had to visit a National Landmark for her summer homework and my daughter and I were more than happy to help out.  We even took it upon ourselves to include an ice cream lunch as extra credit.  Both of these mansions (and all the other ones there) are so grand, spectacular and unbelievable.  It’s hard to imagine that these “houses” were only summer homes.  At the end of each mansion tour is a gift shop and one item in these shops caught my eye.  These Newport Budgies lamps reminded me of the line of birds in the Free as a Bird stamp set.  For today’s project, I decided to create some Free as a Bird cards inspired by the Newport Mansions.

Inspirational piece

These are the Newport Budgies.  Many of the residents (the wealthiest of Americans: Rockefellers, Vanderbilts) had canaries in beautiful cages and aviaries.  Here is a description of the above piece:  A Newport Mansions exclusive reproduction. This lamp features five glazed white canaries seated on a perch, a reproduction of an English porcelain original from the collections of the Newport Mansion Kingscote; finished in glazed snow white, inspired by the pure white marble of Marble House. This unique piece is also reminiscent of the mid-19th century aviary which formerly filled the 1837 Gothic Revival summer cottage with the chirping of tropical birds.

My Interpretation

I love to be inspired to create cards from non-card ideas.  The challenge of coming up with an idea from something I see is always fun.  Here is my interpretation of the reproduction of canaries in card form:

I embossed the birds with black embossing powder and colored them in with the Blends Markers (lights & darks of Granny Apple Green, Daffodil Delight and Calypso Coral, leaves in Mossy Meadow).  The background leaves are stamped tone on tone with Granny Apple Green.

In this card, I embossed the birds in white on a Smoky Slate background.  To create a marble feel, I used a Very Vanilla layer between the Smoky and Whisper White layers.  Both cards used the Whisper White Flax Ribbon to break up the stamped leaves background from the plain top.

Products