January Theme Swap - Birds

Birds, not my favourite subject so I thought I would rise to the challenge.  I knew how I wanted to design this theme but my muse was gone.......  I painted the base cards with brown and, when dry, I added various shades of green as background leaves.

I found this Zentangled bird on the web so printed it out onto some yellow paper in a draft printout which meant the outlines were very faint.  This left me able to colour in the bird with my ball point pens.
I used orange for the beak, red for the breast, pink for the legs and brown elsewhere.  Once I finished all the lines I fussy cut the bird and attached it to the background.  Once the glue had dried I realised that the ink had faded so had to redraw them again!!  I outlined the bird with brown ball point to give it a bit of definition.

I cut this bird out of a French Dictionary page and edged it with brown ink.  Once attached, I outlined this bird with brown ball point pen, adding an eye with a black ball point and a white gel pen.

I cut this bird out of some pink paper with very faint text lines, attached it to the background and then outlined it with brown ball point pen.  I added some shade lines to the back of the bird to give it some depth.

I don't know whether I am happy with these finished cards.  They are not the cards I visualised but they are birds..... and they are different!!

UPDATE
I have received he following cards....

Beautiful decoupage with clear stickles.
Thank you BarbaraB.

Very pretty owls.

Thank you MargaretC.

Stamping and a feather.

Thank you SueF.