Monday, February 27, 2012

Bonkers for Birds


Maybe I inherited it from my dad, who is an avid bird watcher, but I am just crazy in love with bird things.
Granted my obsession is slightly different from my dads; He walks around mountains, forests, and lakes with binoculars and I trawl the Internet, magazines, and various boutiques with my iPhone. 
(Barbara Wakefield and West Elm products pictured here)  


  

But essentially we are doing the same thing.   Looking for the rarely seen, beautifully designed and delightfully surprising BIRD.  sigh.

I needed something special to flank each side of my fireplace - Most of the time you want a special piece of art or a mirror to go over the fire place, but as the ceilings in my circa 1930's building aren't that high, that wall really was begging for art work on either side of it.

For almost a year I tried various things, butterflies, black and white portraits, nothing.... finally I spent ONE DAY solving this problem for a grand total of $15.95

First, I had these two ikea frames, which I had bought to house my logo for my booth at the Green Living Show.   They had just been hanging about and getting in the way since I wasn't crazy about a dark frame in my nice fresh light apartment.




So of course I painted them - using a couple of sample pots from various clients projects.
Sample pots of paint don't have any finish to them so they are flat flat flat - great for walls but boring for my frames.    So I poured an entire tub of white glue over them and vacated my apartment for the rest of the afternoon to escape the fumes.   (Obviously, the last part hadn't been thought through very well)

  

I escaped across the street to a local coffee shop, The Remarkable Bean where I found and bought two satellite images - one of Sydney, Australia and the other of London, UK.

I emailed these over to my friend, and sometime savior, Sona at The Mail Slot and asker her to print a large format glossy images of each.

  

I traced out a Kookaburra on the back of one and a nice fat Robin on the back of the other, and using a scalpel I carefully cut around the silhouette.
Luckily I got them the right way round!
After spray mounting them onto a nice fresh crisp watercolour paper I framed them in my new bluey green frames and am super pleased with the result.






p.s.   can you spot the opera house?