A House For Her Dreams

As you can see, this is a case of "and now for something completely different", in contrast to the rest of my work.

Earlier this year, I was overjoyed to find these little birdhouses in the euro (dollar) store. I picked up six, and now I'm just getting around to working with them. To do that I started by pulling off all the tacky deco and painting the equally somewhat strange background colors over with gesso, to create blank walls.

This weekend I wanted to make a house for a friend, Nati, as part of her birthday gift, so I pulled out her favorite colors (blues) and started off. I've been trying out some ideas based on the work of Lisa Kaus (link below). I reasoned that Lisa's "crafty" style is something Nati will like much more than my usual approaches and colors, so I chose to work on her house in that way.

I used a pencil to mark out grids on each of the surfaces. The lines remain visible n the finished product, but that only adds to the appeal. My next step was to color the spaces in the grids using water soluble pencils in shades of blue, lilac, and french grey. Then I spread and blurred the color with a paintbrush and water. Once the paint was dry, I drew spirals and dots in the squares, using the same color as the (now lighter) base layer in each case. After that I collaged scraps of printed paper and corrugated card onto some squares and went over the grid lines to bring them out more clearly.

I used buttons, tiny seashells, netting, rub-on transfers, and word stickers as embellishments on the outside. Then I thought it might be nice to raise the house off its flat base, so I painted four half circles and glued them to the underside.

To finish off, I punched around thirty little tags for Nati's hopes, wishes, and dreams, tied various blue yarns to them, and popped them inside the birdhouse. The gift tag, translated, reads "a house for your dreams", and has blue glass beads and shells threaded onto the tie.

Lisa Kaus
http://www.lisakaus.com/