A New Technique

I'm usually ready to try a new technique and one of the swaps I'm in has us doing just that. It's embossing a piece of black matte metal with colored pencils. There is a video about it at the Dick Blick website. It's interesting, but it is not something I would want to try again. 

There just isn't enough opportunity for rich color in this. The video suggested using Prismacolor Pencils because of their softness and they did work well. I guess you could call it a metal Zentangle, but I'm not crazy about doing those either! Now I have this extra metal, enough for 3 more skinnys and I'm not sure what I will do with it. Perhaps trade it with someone? 

On another note, the bluebirds I wrote about earlier are feeding their second brood, the eggs hatched last week. When the fledglings leave the nest, they fly up to a tree branch and stay together and the parents continue to feed them for a while. So, these parents are feeding their second group of nestlings, and I noticed the juveniles from the first brood are hanging around the nest, still waiting to be fed. The parents either ignore them now or fly at them to drive them away. Poor things, time to grow up!