Putting a Bird On It

I’m sure many of you have already seen the hilarious sketch “Put a Bird On It” from IFC’s show “Portlandia.” If not, watch here and see how these comedic actors poke fun at the recent trend of putting birds on all kinds of fashion and décor to spruce them up.



Well, yes, we can poke fun, but putting birds on things is really a hot trend. Audubon Magazine’s blog have noted that items featuring our feathered friends might actually increase sales. They say that sellers on Etsy, an online marketplace where artists sell their own creations, say that their bird items are some of their top sellers. And even more recently, the Wall Street Journal has written about birds being all the rage in this spring’s fashion lineup.

As birders, of course we are drawn to birdies on and off the field. The recent boom of this bird trend is only making it that much easier for a couple of hipster birders to enjoy their love of birding and birds in other ways - from coffee mugs, to shower curtains, to trendy t-shirts (all things we actually own). You’ll even see the bird trend mixing with other trends, like the revival of the phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On,” which was originally a phrase used in propaganda posters by the British government in 1939 at the start of World War II. Now you’ll see heaps of varieties of this phrase on posters and t-shirts to fit your liking, including “Keep Calm and Put a Bird On It.”

We try not to be TOO much of “those crazy bird people” where everything we own has birds on them. We don’t mind being those crazy birding people, just not those slightly overboard bird lovers whose homes are covered head to toe in bird décor. We try to be a little selective in which bird items we choose to surround us, always keeping it hip or chic, of course ;-)

Vintage plate drawing/engraving of a Greater Painted Snipe we have in our home. From the French nature book, Dictionnnaire Pittorosque d'Histoire Naturelle et des Phenomenes de la Nature, 1839.

That brings me to my latest home project that I recently completed. I was all too happy to see that wall art in the form of large vinyl decals or stickers was increasingly trending. They are a fun and easy way to jazz up your bare walls without all the hassle of painting and re-painting when you move out. These decals, like this one here, are supposed to be easy to apply, but will stay on well enough until you are ready to remove them with ease. The only problem is that these stickers can get quite pricey, so I decided to give it a whirl and try to make my own bird wall art.

Making bird stencils which I then traced and cut out using pretty paper.

Giving a splash of color by using a different color of patterned paper for a frame

Using leftover patterned paper, I created this lovely wall art of flying swallows, actually using photos of Purple Martins as my silhouette models. I simply drew shapes of flying swallows in various sizes so that it would create the effect of a group of them flying towards you, traced them on patterned paper, cut them out, and voila! I sort of tested out using just regular washable glue stick like kids use in school as my adhesive. I’m hoping that they’ll stick well enough to the wall but be easy to remove without ruining the paint. So far, they’re sticking up well! And to spice things up, I added my own touch by stenciling a pretty frame out of a different color of patterned paper for some contrast. It’s an affordable and fun way to “put a bird on it” in our own home.

Close-up of the finished product!

Here is the entire bird wall art I created!