Painting a Birdhouse Village! || The Social Easel
In this live streaming session, Christie Renee Hawkins demonstrates how she paints a set of wooden birdhouses that her dad built, turning each into a unique, outdoor‑ready piece. She walks viewers through selecting and mixing DecoArt Americana Outdoor Living paints, choosing brushes, and applying decorative details such as sunflowers, a picket fence, and a window. Throughout the demo she answers live chat questions, shares tips for painting on rough wood, and emphasizes that outdoor acrylics need extra scrubbing and can be re‑worked after drying. Christie promotes her Amazon store (where the exact paint colors are listed under the mixed‑media section) and her blog for further resources. She also teases an upcoming collaborative paint‑party workshop with Heidi from Texas Art and Soul, outlining the workshop’s focus on fall‑season sunflowers and pumpkins and how participants can use the material to start their own paint‑party business. The session ends with a call for viewer feedback on design choices and a promise to continue the project over the next few days.
Chapters
Hey guys, so I am painting a birdhouse village that my dad made me, and I thought you guys would want to kind of see what we're doing. The girls and I started on these a little while ago, so we each have our different color birdhouse that we're working on, but I thought I would jump on and kind of show you some detailing on the one that I'm gonna start on. and you can see me paint, some little details on these. So I think I want to make them all different, and they're all super colorful, but a lot of people ask me constantly, hey Kay, what kind of paints I recommend for using outdoors, either on wood or metal. So, for those of you that follow both Tamara and I, and maybe you went to our live event, or her live event, it wasn't mine. I was a guest speaker there, but I taught how to paint on a metal bucket, and this is the same paint that we used at that event. So I'm just going to show you— now Facebook is being weird and will not flip the camera, so normally I can flip this so you can see it the right way, but this is Americana— it's DecoArt. So most of the products that I use are DecoArt, but Americana Decor, and it's called Outdoor Living, and it's exterior or interior paint. and it has a thicker consistency to it. So this one's a little thicker than some. They're all a little bit different. Oops, I kicked the podium there. So anyways, that is what I use. If you go to my Amazon store, then all you have to do is go to the mixed media section of my Amazon store and you'll see a couple of these colors listed here. I did this one, which is Wildflower, and then I think I have— let me grab it really quick. I'm not seeing the name on here. Maybe it's on the lid. Anyways, this is like a teal color that I used, and these are the colors that I used on the birdhouse that I'm working on, which is this like peachy colored one. So what I wanted to show you guys though is if you are working on a project outside like this and you don't have the exact color that you want, use this as your base. And then I have like these other DecoArt colors. I didn't want this to be quite so peachy, so I wanted to add a little bit of pink to it. So this was Dragon Fruit. I just squirted a little bit of that on there. And mix myself my own color. So again, like I tell you guys, don't always feel like you have to be stuck with whatever comes in the container. You can mix your own colors however you want to. So those are in my Amazon store. I'm going to get these out of the way. We have a lot of colors out here. This last one I'm going to paint is going to be purple. So we've got yellow, purple, green, which I think you can barely see. At this angle. You can see a little bit better there. And then this one's Emma's. This one's Sophia's. She wants to do like an under-the-sea type of birdhouse. I think on the one I'm going to show you guys tonight, I am gonna do like some sunflowers kind of growing back on this and then put like a white fence in front of it. That's my idea right now anyways. We'll see if I want to stick with it. But I thought you guys might want to jump on here with me while I'm doing that and see me do some of the detail work instead of just painting the colors. But let me— I'm gonna see if I can find a skinnier brush over here. Hey, Teresa! One of my little detail brushes here. I think we'll use this guy. We'll try. I just grabbed my random thing of paintbrushes. Because I'm painting on rough wood, there's only so much detail you can expect to get on these, and it's going to be one of those things no one's going to notice that when this is going to go up in my garden on a post. So the little fine details, you don't need to— if you decide to do something like this, you don't need to be overly concerned about very, very specific details. So I'm going to turn the camera so you guys can see what I'm painting. Scoot you in a little bit closer even. Can you guys— is that a good view? I think I'm going to scoot these just a little bit. Let me know if that works for you guys. I'm gonna pull you up over here so I can see your comments. So this was a green that I mixed a little bit of that teal just to change the color of it than what was straight out of the container. You guys see what I'm doing here? Okay. Shoot me a little thumbs up or a heart if this view is good for you guys. That, that looks good. Okay, so I'm going to try not to get in front of the camera too much. So I kind of started here with a little bit bigger brush, but I'm just gonna start with just some kind of wavy, wavy lines that are gonna come up here and be my sunflower stems. Hey, Sherry! Thank you, Kay. I love these birdhouses too. So my dad did this for me quite a while ago, and it's, you know, one of those summertime projects that you always think you're gonna have time to get to, and you just don't quite have enough time in the day. So when I'm doing this, you guys, I Skinny lines is something that people are always asking me about. I'm not pressing down super hard. Okay. Now I don't want these really, really skinny because if I make them too skinny, keep in mind, this is going to go up high in my garden. If I make things too skinny, they're not going to show up from far away. So I don't want to go too much. I think I might have one more. Let's maybe have one come up taller here. And if you're just jumping on, I'm using Americana Outdoor Living, and on the back, just to— just so you know, it says This gives like an eggshell finish, no sealer required. So this is excellent for— it's resistant to water, scuffs, and fading. Ideal for wood, concrete, masonry, terracotta, metal, most plastics, and more. So needless to say, you can use this on a ton of stuff, but this is perfect for outdoor. And perfect for my little birdhouse project that I'm working on. So I may jump back on tomorrow with the girls while they finish theirs, if they know what they want to do yet. I think I want to do one— I really want to do it on Sophie's, but I don't know if she's gonna let me. I want to do one with like a big doorway around it, or I could do it— can you guys see this? It's kind of hard angle, but I could do like a door here in the middle in that green one, and that might like look kind of cute because it's the middle of the birdhouse, like you're entering the house there. So I've got all kinds of, all kinds of ideas. So I'm just gonna add some little leaves on here. And I stagger mine. You could have them go directly across from each other. Thank you, Fran. Yes, this is DecoArt Outdoor Living, and it is in my Amazon store. Let me see if I can pull that up, post that for you guys really quick. I think I can. And also, if you go to my website and you go to the blog post, there's all kinds of information there in the blog post, different things that I'm working on. But if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the blog post, my links for both of my shopping stores are there as well. But Amazon is where I am able to actually add specific items for you. So it makes it easier for me instead of having to like list each thing. You can go to my Amazon store. This one is under— sorry, I'm trying to talk and do something at the same time. That doesn't really work. This was under mixed media. So if you go to— I don't know if you can see this. I'm gonna try to pull it up. So if you go to my Amazon store under mixed media supplies, you'll see two colors up at the top. And then once you click on those, it'll take you to a whole bunch of other colors. But there's some other stuff there. This is the metallics version. But I'm gonna post that link in the comments for you really quick. While I'm waiting for that to load, I'll put a couple more leaves on here. Did you guys make your fork? Yes. Well, I made it. Do you need a trinket for Ashton? And I'm not putting like a ton of like detail as far as like shading and stuff in here. You could if you wanted to and, you know, play with some different colors. I just posted the link to my Amazon store, so if you're curious what that is. And this, I'll probably carry the sunflowers around the side here because this is going to be the outside of the birdhouse. I'm going to pull this in a little bit closer. Good night. You can do little silhouettes in mine too if you want. Okay. They're giving me permission to paint on their birdhouses if I want to. Mom is watching. Mom, I'm finally painting the birdhouses that Dad made me. They may or may not be done by this weekend, but we're hoping— my parents are coming up this weekend, so we're hoping to get it put up in the garden. I'm gonna let some of these leaves overlap each other. Grab my water here. Hey, Rosalyn! So I think I want to do sunflowers. So for the sunflowers, I don't have a dark brown in the Outdoor Living, but I don't think it's gonna matter for this small detail that I'm gonna do. Oh, Bonnie says she has one on her table ready to be painted. There you go. Now you've got some inspiration here. I may change up the way I'm doing this. I don't know if I want to start with these centers. It's different when I'm working with different kind of paint. It's a little, a little different than when I do my sunflowers on my truck, so we'll see. Now if you paint with me much or watch me paint much, you'll know that sometimes I'll do things and I don't always like it. And then I'll just paint over top of it. So don't ever feel like you're like stuck with whatever it is that you're doing. You can always go back and change it. Let's get some brighter yellow here. This is primary yellow. So I'm just really going to load my brush up here. Just kind of rotate around. This would be really cute with like some white daisies with it. That would be cute. Linda said make the center hole a sunflower too. That would be cute. I was kind of thinking about making it a window. I can't decide what I want to do with it yet. I may come back and fill in that brown a little bit more there. But if you've seen like my sunflowers in a truck, you'll know that my sunflowers are pretty messy little sunflowers. There is not a lot of detail to them, and I have a really loose style of painting, so I'm not trying to be super realistic. I just want the idea of these flowers growing up alongside my little birdhouse here. Make sure I'm not missing any questions over here. Yeah, if you guys have any questions, just shout them out to me. Tomorrow I will be going live with Heidi from Texas Art and Soul. And if you want to learn how to paint some big sunflowers and some fall pumpkins, we're going to be talking all about that workshop that we have coming up where Heidi is going to be teaching you. I think I want to add some more flowers in here. I don't think that's enough. I'm going to add flowers and then add stems to them. How about that? Heidi's going to be teaching you everything about how to start a paint party business or even just your first paint party. Maybe you just want to make a little bit of extra money. I'm going to teach you how to do the painting step by step. So we're breaking up these sessions over the span— I believe it's 9 days— I think we're teaching inside the group. And at the end, you're going to have everything you need to know to host your very first fall paint party. And if you've been on the fence about doing something like this, or you're worried about it, fall is the time to do it because everyone wants to paint seasonal paintings. It's the best part of the year for creatives, and I am giving you guys full permission to take my Pumpkin and Sunflowers painting and share that locally and do paint nights with it. So you have full access to teach that in your local town. And the whole thing is only $20. So we're gonna be answering all your questions tomorrow. Poor little Sophie has to go get her 2 more teeth pulled tomorrow, and then we're gonna do it after I get her home and settled and get her situated, and then Heidi and I are gonna jump on. So I'll send out a a little message tomorrow before we go live. Thank you for sharing, Bonnie. What do you guys like this so far? It's getting pretty cute. I think it's gonna be even cuter once I get the little fence on there. All right, so I'm going to use a little bit bigger brush here, and I do something a little different for my fence. So I want it to be kind of, you know, like tarnished looking, kind of like an old fence instead of like a perfectly brand new one. So I always start with brown first, and then after that starts drying, then I come back and put some white over top of it. Thank you, ladies. And I think I want to do like a different theme on each one. There are so many cute ideas out there of what you can do with birdhouses. On this one, I think I'm gonna do like, like a checkered front on the roof part, and I'm gonna carry this fence all the way around the sides and add more sunflowers around that side. So I'm just going to show you guys this front part. If I can get my Tablecloth out of the way. And you'll notice when you paint with this, this paint, like I said, it's meant for outdoors, so it definitely sticks to you a little bit more than regular acrylic does. So you got to do a little extra scrubbing. Just be prepared for that. Grab a little bit more brown here. Thank you, Bob. So, and I know this fence looks a little rough right now, and— but this is— I think this is good for you guys to see, because sometimes things don't look so great while you're doing them, and you're like, I don't know if it's gonna turn out. It's looking pretty bad right now. Right now you may be watching and think, I don't know what I'm doing. And it doesn't look that pretty, but once we get the white on there, it starts coming together. So when you're painting, you just have to trust the process. And I am purposely making mine not even and perfectly straight. I want it to be a little rough, be a little rough looking. And I'm really trying to decide what I want to do out here. I kind of still want like a window. I think I do. Now I'm gonna do this. If I change my mind, I can always come back to it later. So whenever you are painting with acrylic, just keep in mind nothing you do is permanent. If you don't like something you started on and it's not looking the way that you want it to, you can let it dry and you can come back and change it. I think I'm going to fill this in and then maybe come back and add— I may even come in with a little, like, purple or something there. I'm not sure yet. This is going to be a come back and see what I want to do, but I think I'm going to add like a white trim and panels on the window there. Hey, Karen. All right. So let's grab a little bit of white. I'm just going to scoop some on my plate here. And so this brown may not be completely dry in all areas, which is actually kind of what I want. I don't want it to be perfectly solid white. So that's why I put the brown down first, just to give it a little bit of that age. And then I'm just going right over top of it with the white. You guys like it with the white fence? I think I like it with the white. Now we'll pull across our side posts here. And we've got our little white picket fence on here. And I think looking at it now, I think I'm going to want to come and add some different color flowers mixed in with my sunflowers. And you can come back once that's dry if you want it brighter white. You just let that dry first, and then you can come back over top of it and add more white to it. But I'm thinking I want to do the same thing up here for my window. And I may pull those sunflowers back over top of that window again. I don't think I want to keep the inside of this window brown, though. I think I want to make it something else. I haven't decided yet. I don't know, I may not like these lines either. What, you picking them up at the library? Yeah, where they— 10 minutes away. I'm thinking I don't like it with the grid in there. So I may have to think about that. I may come around and make that a circle. But I am gonna pause tonight. You guys can leave me your feedback and let me know what you're gonna— what you think— what you think I should do. I have to run and go pick Kylie and her friends up. So I'm gonna jump on here— jump off here with you guys, go pick them up, and then I'm gonna come back tomorrow and paint some more of this with you. This may end up being like a 3-day live by the time it's all said and done. But let me know what you think. Give me your ideas on how to finish this one off, and we'll be back on in the next couple of days. So everyone have a good night. And hope that inspires you. Maybe you want to go get yourself a birdhouse now so you can paint it. So I'll talk to you guys later. Bye!
