Right now, our patch of Earth is looking quite lovely. The early morning sun is bathing the backyard in a warm glow. The grass is green and glistening from last night's rain. Squirrels are scurrying, birds are swooping, daffodils and vinca are blooming and the trees are budding.
And all my children and the dogs are sleeping so it's quite quiet and peaceful.
Today I'm hoping to try out another project from my Summer Art Series with Ebby and her pal. We're going to be making Yes You Can Mermaids. I'm not quite done with my prototype, but it's very cute if I do say so myself...which I just did ; . As with all the of the projects I'm hoping to do with the children this summer, it's a very eco-friendly project. Almost all of the materials have been saved from our recycling bin or were picked up by me at the ExCL center. Seems like a good way to celebrate Earth Day.
Speaking of ExCL, my recycled birdhouse is now complete. They are closed this week due to school vacation, but I'm planning on dropping it off next week while I pick up my next batch of supplies.
As promised, a few more details about the birdhouse:
- the birdhouse itself is a recycled cube tissue box covered in fabric samples from a showroom at the Boston Design Center via ExCL.
- the roof is made up of 2 chipboard pieces from ExCL (donated by a greeting card company, I think)
the post is a shipping tube covered in pages torn from a 1970s report on the British economy
- the base is shipping material that I carved into a leaf shape, dug a hole in and covered in another fabric sample and then painted green.
- The bird is die cut from a plastic divider card
- the perch is a piece of a flat binding clip
All of the materials, with the exception of the tissue cube which I took out of our recycling bin, are from ExCL. I loved the challenge of working with only recycled or reused materials, it's a great kickstart to creativity. With the exception of the dryer lint bird that never properly took shape, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Hopefully someone will bid on it at the fundraising auction at ExCL : )
Happy Earth Day!
{if you like, check out even more photos of the birdhouse on my flickr photostream}
