Cheeping like Royalty

After fighting off a no good very bad all together nasty rhinovirus on Sunday I found myself suddenly feeling a bit better, about the same time my husband scummed to the abomination. But much as one feels the need to stretch their legs and run around screaming "I'm still alive" after battling a debilitating illness I was getting restless.

So in a fit of insanity I grabbed the car (then remembered it'd work a lot better if I drove it instead of trying to carry an automobile) and traveled to Michaels to see if there was anything to keep me distracted for a few days. (I was trying to anxiously forget Dragon Age 2 dropped on Tuesday and also keep my fingers and brain busy). I got some canvas and wandered around the hordes of displaced Highschool girl's basketballers in for state when I spotted it.

Back in the wooden half forgotten aisle it sat beckoning me with a siren call.

I was going to make a castle birdhouse. A quick purchase of the $4 temptress and then a swing over to the hobby store to get a little addition on top and I was ready to go.

Except it looked well frankly boring as sin. There was no life to it, it was machine cut to be perfect which to the human eye screams fake and dull.

Out came my trusty dremel and while spraying sawdust in my eyes and pounding out my ears I sanded down the edges of the stones and warped the sides to give it a wear and tear look:

Now that the stones looked more like classic castle stones comes the fun part - painting!

Always paint the black first, in this case the mortar and some of the more deep scars.

Then I covered the stones in a fairly uniform and boring shade of grey.

Now comes the fun part. Out came my smaller sponge and using a combination of black, white, grey and brown (a very necessary color for stone) I gave the grey and black castle a stone like texture:

But I still wasn't quite done and using my photoshop skills I created two Dragon Age banners for the castle to fly (Yeah I know, I'm an incredibly sad person). And then I hand painted moss, hours and hours of moss for that just discovered out of a swamp look.

Behold my Birdhouse Castle:

 

 

 

To prove that the moss and color goes all the way around here's the back:

And because I'm crazy I added some blood stains on top due to the unexpected dragon attack (the dragon I also painted, it started out purple and green which is no kind of respectable color for a dragon to be):

All it needs is a hook and then I can hang it so my small birds can live in style. Cold drafty, haunted and spooky style.