My Undersized Urbanite 2014 Entry - The Bird House

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.

 materials/props;

-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.

Undersized Urbanite 2014 - One Last Update

Christina posted on her blog that there are only 6 days left in Undersized Urbanite, and that was a roughly a day ago-As of posting this I've got about 4 1/2 days to finish this house. (ah!)

So here's my last round of WIP photos;

 

Made and then painted pretty blue frames for the shutters

(more cereal box cardboard)

 

Finished weaving the cereal box floors,

 

added some Popsicle sticks to finish the edges,

 

and used a few more Popsicle sticks to make a hardwood floor.

 

I planned to just paint the floors brown,

 but then I found some Sharpies and gold paint. ^_^

 

There's the brown. A really watered down wash of acrylic paint. 

I'll see how it looks tomorrow, after it dries, and then go from there.

Last year I was given a small pile of torn up, but otherwise usable paper bags. Instead of being tossed out, some of them went into the walls/ceilings of the Steampunk House and the rest ended up in a box of paper supplies.
Well, I'm using a few more now for the walls/ceilings again.
Stay tuned to see what that looks like. I'm waiting for the glue to dry as I type.

(The house this year is more recycling than anything.)

I've got a lot of work ahead of me still, but I'm actually further along  than these photos show, and my house is supposed to be bird house themed-minimal furniture. I started raiding my stash for pieces I can use, and I already started some of the room accessories.

The final big (small) reveal should be later this weekend (Here's hoping).

Now I'm off to get some late night miniature work finished 

(good thing I like doing this)

In case I forget to say it later-good luck to all the other entrants. :)

Undersized Urbanite 2014 - Maybe I Will Finish On Time?

Ok, I'm behind. I'll admit it. I can't even say that Undersized Urbanite is what I'm working on in my free time, because ever since things got messed up with my Curious Concepts Project that is what I'm working on in my free time. Undersized Urbanite has been moved to moments when I honestly can't work on anything else, or at least not anything on my laptop. For the record, so far I was able to work on this project on Christmas, the opening/closing ceremonies of the Olympics, and maybe one more day while my computer was running some updates. And I don't know how the thought process started, but for some reason 90% of this house is now being made out of upcycled cereal boxes-nothing wrong with that, but that is an odd medium choice, Don't you think?

Well here are the photos I took to show my progress. (Sorry about the quality, but they're WIP shots, the pretty pictures aren't taken until I'm finished);

Instead of painting the whole thing, 

this house is going to have textured scrap booking paper for siding.

 I used the template that I drew up earlier 

to make the front door/window shutters out of cereal box cardboard.

 Sketched out the separate planks of wood, cut them apart, 

scored the cardboard to give it a faux-wood grain texture, 

did a wash with brown acylic paint, 

and then glued all the pieces back together.

(and then repeat for all of the shutters)

A better/closeup of the wood grain texture I was talking about.

One of the newly "stained" window shutters.

Olympic opening ceremonies, I was painting cereal boxes. XD

Mock-up with the new door/round window shutters, 

and the scrapbook paper siding. 

Is it starting to look like a big birdhouse to you?

And then several weeks later I decided that I'd better start working on the interior, starting with the floors;

There's the floor template + 3 soon to be woven mat floors, 

made out of-you guessed it!- more cereal boxes. XD

Marked for cutting, and I scored the floors 

just like I did with everything else so far.

Pieces to weave into the floor.

Ready to go.

Weaving. (I think this was a box of Honey-Nut Cheerios)

This is what the floors should look like when I'm done.

And that's pretty much where I am with this project. I did finish one of the floors, but I didn't take photos of it yet. Neen mentioned that we had 40 days to finish these, and that was a few weeks ago,...Guess it's a good thing that I picked a primitive style theme this year. Will I finish in time?!!! (Let's hope so)

Undersized Urbanite 2014 - Planning

Still working on The Curious Concepts Project, but over the holidays I had a couple hours where I didn't have anything to do, and couldn't use my laptop. So as promised in my last update, I scrubbed down my somewhat grimy little house with dish soap.

And then after it dried I started planning out the exterior.

graph paper!

The house/store/cafe (I really need to pick soon) is bird house themed, so I want to keep all the doors and windows rounded with either nest material or perches mixed in, but it should still look like a dollhouse when it's done.

Figured out where the door is going-Progress!

A fun fact about this house: Some of the pieces are permanently glued together, while others are just held together with screws. At first I didn't like the screws, one more thing to cover up,...But then I realized that the annoying front section on the top floor, that was going to be a big pain to design/decorate around, comes off.

Wow, look at all that space. 

And you can see the bird house opening from the inside now.

The roof pieces come off too. 

This room will be so easy to decorate.

Not a ton of progress overall, but I've figured out enough to think about what I'm going to do, once I have time to do it all. That's something. :)