I’ve been spending some wonderful, quiet hours in my craft room lately working on this gorgeous Blue Jay, and it completely stole my heart!
I used the stunning Feathered Beauty Die Set from Altenew to bring this bird to life. When you are assembling a creature with dozens of tiny wing and tail feathers, the secret is a cohesive color palette. I mixed a collection of blues from CutCardStock—including Indigo Blue, Blue Calico, and deep Navy—to give the bird natural variation.
To take it a step further, I used ink blending to deepen the shadows on the feathers and turned those Astrobright Yellow flowers into a fiery orange-yellow sunset blend. If you look closely at his wings, I also added a light mist of Prize Ribbon Distress Spritz for a gorgeous, shimmering finish that catches the light beautifully when you hold the card.
The die set actually features integrated alignment keyholes to make putting the puzzle pieces together surprisingly easy, which meant I could focus on the fun part: adding color and texture! To anchor the whole scene, I used a gorgeous, shimmery Stardream Soft White cardstock for the background matte.
If you want to see the full layout of how I built the backgrounds and grab the shopping links for these beautiful blue and metallic cardstocks, the full tutorial is live over on the CutCardStock blog right now!
Table in the Attic 