I finished my entry late last night and took some well lit indoor shots right away, just in case. Good thing too because the sky was pretty overcast when I went out today. Some parts of the house really popped outside while others still look better under my super bright work-space lamp, so I'm posting the best of whatever I took during both photoshoots. Sound good? Ok, then let's go see the house. ^_^
For those of you just tuning in, you are welcome to check out
my work-in-progress posts for this project, but don't worry about missing anything major-Here is the house before I began working on it;
That blue disk is a busted lazy Susan that the house can rotate on, I've since put it back underneath the house where it belongs. For this contest I understandably had to cover up that painting on the front, but I did keep the blue roof and the bird house theme.
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My entry - The Bird House;
A little back story for you;
The Bird House is basically a 3 floor complex (for birds who have all gone and flown off for the time being). This tall and tiny building includes a birdie self-serve "grocery store", a museum of oddities/shiny things, and a bird nest hotel.
The Exterior;
All the circular windows are shuttered up except for the hotel's mini entrance at the top. My original plans were for a white house with wooden doors/windows, and blue trim to match the original roof. I stuck to that plan, right up until a last minute decision that this house looked somewhere between boring and creepy when left all white. So I threw in some other colors and created a bright contemporary style siding design. I wouldn't do this to your typical house, but as a commercial venue, and an Artsy bird house, I think it works well.
materials;
-Cardboard (cereal boxes) for the wooden door/windows and their blue frames.
-Textured scrap booking paper, cut into strips for the diagonal siding.
-Acrylic paint (on the cardboard)
Now let's turn the house around and go inside,
Interior;
Starting with the bottom floor - The Grocery;
After an especially long winter, stocks are running low.
Good thing it's Spring. ^_^
There's still a few homemade suet bells on the shelves, but the leaves, hay, and other nest making bits have been almost entirely used up by the hotel's feathered guests. Guess the birds will have to fly around outside and find what ever they need now. (It just occurred to me while typing this that I spent our extra long winter decorating a bird house for Spring, hmm...)
materials/props;
-Cardboard (cereal boxes) for the woven flooring
-Popsicle sticks for the hard wood flooring
-Brown Paper bags, for the walls.
-Polymer clay + a few seed beads, for the suet bells.
-Sharpies and Acrylic paint-for color. :)
-A miniature shelf-no labels, bought at a rummage sale.
-Whatever that big disk in the back is supposed to be-part of a necklace I found.
-Leaves, hay, fabric scraps, etc.
Next - The Museum of Oddities and Shiny Things;
An assortment of items that the birds found while out migrating, and whatever else birds do throughout the year, when not staying at bird house hotels of course. (Just go with it ^_^ )
There's not much a bird can do with these things (do you suppose they know what a rubber chicken is, Or what a bird cage is for?), so they made a tiny museum to display their findings for others to enjoy/laugh at.
-Cardboard (cereal boxes) for the woven flooring
-Popsicle sticks for the floor edges
-Brown Paper bags, for the walls.
-Sharpies and Acrylic paint-for color. :)
-Leaf stems and a rubber band (painted white) - You know, a typical birdcage.
-A miniature rubber chicken
-Unfinished dollhouse flower boxes make up the shelving.
-The shiny things are all jewelry/jewelry findings
-Leaves, hay, fabric scraps, etc.
And finally, the top floor - The Bird Nest Hotel
The little bits of fabric scraps and thread scattered along the other floors,
all lead to here.
(Btw, I can take the roof off of this house)
As a human, I don't nest in trees, but I do enjoy looking at them enough that if my house had no windows I would probably paint a few trees on the walls. And here in the hotel, if you happen to be one of the many birds that prefers nesting in trees over inside of a bird house (but also need to stay the night in this bird house), the setup should work for just about everyone who can fit through the entrance. (one of the few hotels with a visible height limit).
The nests were all going to brown paper, until I remembered seeing what happens when birds find things like yarn to build their nests out of-Nests can actually be all sorts of colors. So I broke out some scrap construction paper and used some scrap fabric/leftover bits of thread to make this bird nest hotel as colorful as the Springtime flowers outside.
materials/props;
-Cardboard (cereal boxes) for the woven flooring
-Popsicle sticks for the floor edges
-Brown Paper bags, for the walls.
-Assorted papers for the nests.
-Sharpies and Acrylic paint-for color. :)
-Leaves, hay, fabric scraps, etc.
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Just an afterthought; One of the things that I've been mentioning to my readers throughout
this project is all the up-cycled materials that have gone into it. The
house itself was purchased second-hand at a rummage sale. The doors,
circle window shutters/blue window frames, and most of the flooring (the
woven sections) were all made out of cereal boxes. The walls are
discarded brown paper bags. Paint, Popsicle sticks, and most of the
other things used for this house were left over from other projects or
found outside. I didn't plan to be quite this thrifty, but it is neat seeing what can be done with some creative thinking, and what's around.
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Well there it is-my finished Undersized Urbanite project for 2014.
Congrats to goes out to all the other entrants -We're done! ^_^
Now time to enjoy seeing what everyone else has come up with this year.
