Wood Burned Birdhouses, Part I

After a slew of diaper cakes and baby showers, it was back to the burn. Wood-burning that is. Christmas was coming up and I had run across a couple of birdhouses (well, three of them, but the third one wasn't for a Christmas present). But I instantly knew what I wanted to do with them.

The first was for RJ's grandparents. They used to live here in Florida, but have since moved to the mountains of North Carolina. When I saw the little lighthouse shape, I thought it would be a great idea to burn it with Floridian waterbirds and plants, to give them back a bit of their old home.

Because the lighthouse was so small and had edged sides rather than being a smooth cylinder all the way around, I had to break up the images so that they could each fit on a panel. This left me with tall and skinny spaces, so I decided to go with stately, slender egrets, water reeds, and cattails.

These on their own, weren't enough, so I took some artistic liberty and added some curvy lines to represent waves in the water, some lily pads, and some extra grass and reeds for more interest. The water lines gave me the idea to give the whole thing a fade of blue to help strengthen the idea of water in the background. This also helped provide contrast to the images, making their whiteness stand out more and pop.

To give the lighthouse itself more interest, I added some architectural lines, representing shingles on the roof, some slanted stripes along a couple of the edges, and a bit of red tint to offset the blue. I think these last minutes touches really helped to finish the piece off, otherwise it would have been a bit too boring to feel complete.

If the roof of the birdhouse entrance at the bottom had been a tad wider, I would have attempted to add shingles to that as well, but as thin as it was, I was a bit afraid to try it. I also would have liked to have added something to the sphere at the top of the house, but I was running out of time before it needed to be shipped, and couldn't think of anything, so I left it as it was.

Other than that, I was overall pretty happy with how it turned out.

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