My Second Favorite Animal is a Songbird… Painting this Table Shows It

My 7 year old granddaughter always asks me what my favorite animal is… I always answer with ‘dog’. But now, she’s starting asking me what my ‘second’ favorite animal is since she knows ‘dog’ is my ‘first’. I love a lot of animals, elephants are for sure way up at the top of my list, but they don’t live around me, so picking an animal that is influencing my daily life, I think I’d have to say my ‘second’ favorite is/are songbirds.

I love the security of the promise Jesus tells us in Matthew 6: 26 “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?”

So when I decided to paint a wicker side table, that has a wooden round top, I decided that an American Redstart songbird would be the design in the center.

I’ve had this table for several years. (Probably close to 20 years!) I originally got it from Pier 1 on clearance for around $15. I don’t have any before pics, but the bamboo base was finished in a greenish stain, and the round top was natural brown stain with a green ivy border around the perimeter. It was pretty neutral and served me well for many years, but needed a facelift.

Over the years, this table has been in many different rooms, like the living room, the family room, and the sunroom. But now it sits between these two armless chairs in the piano/library room of ‘Our Former House’.

Since I didn’t take pics while I was doing the actual painting on this, I’ll quickly tell you the steps I did:

1. Spray painted the base… several coats. (That raw wicker really sucks up the paint!)
2. Primed the entire round top including edge.
3. Painted entire round top and edge the cream color 2 coats, and let dry.
4. Using a thumbtack in the center of the top with string attached to it, I made the circles around the tabletop where I wanted the pattern.
5. Painted the gold and blue circles, 2 coats over the cream… (by having the cream on the whole table top if my gold or blue wasn’t perfect, the cream color underneath would give me the ‘painting grace’ I frequently talk about).

6.  Sketch, then paint the branch and bird.

7. After everything is dry, I then went back with a ‘paint marker’ and did the black lines, leaf patterns and outlined the bird and branch etc. (gotta love that tool!)
8. Then to soften the whole look, I rubbed on some gel stain.
9. And finally, I finished with a couple coats of water based poly over the whole thing.

This was a really fun project to ‘putz’ on, and now this piece is refreshed for another 20 years and sports my ‘second favorite animal’ on it!

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