Birdhouses come alive with colorful paint

What was once a pastime is now a source of income for Brenda Shipley. Shipley, of Washington, has taken to painting birdhouses in her free time. She has honed her craft for over a decade and now sells her creations at the Washington Farmers Market.

The birdhouses come in many colors and shapes. Shipley loves to decorate her birdhouses by painting flowers on them. A few of her birdhouses are even in the shape of flowers. She also likes to paint flags, and birds, too, as long as they don?t scare off the real ones.

?I just let the paint brush flow,? Shipley said. ?It?s called freedom painting. There are no boundaries and no lines. I paint birds on them as well as birds? nests and eggs. It depends on what mood I?m in.?

Shipley began painting birdhouses a decade ago when she was living in her hometown of Ottumwa.

?I remember the first birdhouse I painted,? she said. ?I painted chickens and roosters on it, and put it on a post taller than me.?

Shipley volunteered at a nursing home in Ottumwa where she got plenty of practice with a paintbrush. She brought birdhouses to the home and the residents got to pick out the colors she used to paint them.

?Birdhouses were an easy thing to transport, and they were something elderly people could relate to,? she said. ?I painted about one birdhouse a week, which was then hung inside or outside the nursing home. It was a rewarding experience.?

Shipley finds her birdhouses at craft stores, garage sales and on the Internet. Her main criterion in selecting a birdhouse is a smooth painting surface. Some people like to build birdhouses out of barn wood, which is too rough to paint.

Shipley has a job in addition to her birdhouse sales, so she is often making birdhouses in her spare time away from work. It takes Shipley about four hours to paint a birdhouse. If she works feverishly all day long, and times the drying periods just right, she can paint as many as six in a day. Once the paint has dried, Shipley?s husband Dave puts a sealing coat on the birdhouses so they can be hung outside.

Birdhouses are not the only thing in Shipley?s repertoire. Before she painted houses for birds, Shipley painted 20-gallon barrels containing care packages for soldiers. She painted scenes of Americana on them with yellow roses.

?I?ve got barrels over in Iraq,? she said. ?My painting has gone everywhere.?

Shipley has also painted mailboxes. She set up a booth in Bentonsport where she showed her mailboxes. Tourists from as far away as Arizona and New York ordered Shipley?s mailboxes, which were often painted in patriotic colors or sometimes as birds? nests.

?I?ve painted numerous things, but birdhouses just seemed to be the most beneficial because they serve a purpose,? she said. ?I?ve painted windows and glass, before, and I paint memory boxes, too.?

Shipley?s interest in birdhouses has really taken off in the past two years.

?I started feeding birds and noticing different kinds of birds,? she said. ?I enjoy nature and I enjoy looking at the birds. My favorite kind of bird is the finch, and I have a wren building a nest in a birdhouse on my porch.?

The Shipleys just moved to Washington around Thanksgiving last year. Before that, they resided in Hedrick. Dave said he and Brenda feel comfortable living in Washington, and they like the fact that it?s close to Iowa City.

?Washington just feels homey,? he said.