Play Date - Altered Bird Houses

 Yesterday, i had the pleasure of spending a rainy Sunday with three artist friends.  We were told we were going to alter houses.  Bring some stuff. Not sure what to bring - i chose my standard ephemera and robin's egg blue assortment of papers, and grabbed a few metal embellishments.  The houses turned out to be wooden bird houses - designed to hold a wine bottle that Karen's husband made.  These were leftovers from another project.  We had the option of using corrugated metal roofs, or using foam core. (sorry for the grainy phone camera pics - i'll update later with better ones)

 It is fascinating to me to see what 4 people will do with the same canvas.  Here you can see how varied our houses turned out to be! Mine is mostly pale blue and cream, bird themed of course.  Dorothy's is an eclectic mix of collage and chunky three dimensional objects.  Shelley's is a deep rich blue with metallic accents.  And Karen's was created with an assortment of white gauze and ecru lace glued onto the white box.

 On this side you can see some of the house numbers we added.  And the lovely beaded fringe on Shelley's eaves.

 (note not all of us were finished!)  On mine you can see i tried a photo collage where an image of a house was cut into cubes and spaced apart.  A cool technique i'd like to try again.  Dorothy's face has the eyes and lips of a different magazine image - also very effective.  Karen plans to paint one side of her house to match another painted row house.

 On this view you can see the cherub i have sitting on the brass key i stuck into the house as a perch. Love Dorothy's use of gears and game pieces on her house.  Shelley's roof was gold metallic paper printed and embossed to look like eyelet.  Karen isn't finished her roof of shingles and lace.  and she plans to add buttons.

 Those eggs are cut from a napkin - so the papers underneath show through.

Here's a better shot of that house cut into blocks.  The flower applique is a metal finding that was meant for a wine bottle.I glued some ecru lace around the top edge of the box and sat the corrugated metal roof on top.  I painted it white and added some blue splotches.