A Cardinal for May

I spent most of April debating what I wanted to create next. To kill time I decided to cut glass and make borders on future ornaments. I ended up with a dozen, trying different color combinations, before I decided upon a cardinal for the next real project.

It took me a while to find a photo of a cardinal that I liked. This cardinal is for a friend who always shared photos of cardinal in the snow at her feeder in Michigan. While this photo doesn't show a cardinal at a feeder, I did think it was lovely and doable for my skill level.

I sketched out the design on a small mirror. I know at some point I need to work with larger mosaics but working small costs less.  

Soon I was cutting glass, which is always soothing to do in its own way.

Then I played around with a color check. 

Time to start gluing. I may not have mentioned before but I use Mac Glue, which has been in short supply during Covid. But I have enough to last for a while. Once the border was completed, I couldn't help adding a few of the thin branches with berries. Then I began the big branch. I feel guilty because I honestly don't know what kind of tree has these berries in winter and usually I research such things, but I didn't this time. What I did know was that I wanted the transparent glass for the berries, opaque for the cardinal. (This is similar to what I did in my owl mosaic with the leaves being in transparent glass.)

I had originally intended to make the wings darker but I was unhappy with the look. I settled on just some edges on the feathers. I'm not entirely happy with the wings, but overall in the end I thought it was enough. However, it was about this point that I decided that the cardinal needed to face the other direction. 

In the end I think the cardinal facing the other way turned out fine. I had toyed with adding a few white tesserae for snow, but thought it looked better without.

Even one of my cats approved. Can you see her in the reflection?

I have been putting on the back of the mirrors/mosaics how many hours went into the work. This one was about 30 hours. I'm not sure what project will be next. I guess I can always work on ornaments in the meantime.