The Halloweed Project - October 20 & 27, 2018

Would you like to be a part of a super cool project/art party that is captured and recorded in black & white and later distributed in the form of a book (the haunting of St.Georges... working title)? Proceeds from book sales will fund next years project!!!

Consider yourself warned about this event. It will be spooky and space WILL be limited!

Remember this is a CANNABIS FRIENDLY event so no kiddos also remember to get a DD if you plan on hittin' the sesh hard. BYOC.

This will be an opportunity to do something DIFFERENT this Hallows' Eve! Let's CELEBRATE LEGALIZATION and get WEIRD!

Tickets are $40.00 and gets you:

1. Admission to one or both mask making workshops (October 20th and October 27th) and includes all mask making materials and instructions.
2. Admission to the Halloweed Project on October 27th (photography session, art fire, cannabis legalization celebration, LOTS of munchies!) 
3. Guarantees you your own page in the project book and we will email you a professional digital photo of you in your mask.

Start thinking about your mask!!

The final event is Semi Formal as I would like to have a cohesive timeless kind of feeling for the pictures.

Wanna make your own mask and just show up to the party? Cool, lemmy know and we'll get you a reduced entry fee.

Food and DJ TBA 
Email Lenny info@birdmouse.ca with any questions.

- OCT 20TH-6-12PM PAPIER MACHE MASK MAKING "SESH" 

OCT 27TH 2-12PM MASK MAKING/ HALLOWEED PHOTO SHOOT / LEGALIZATION ARTFIRE/CELEBRATION/SNACK ATTACK/chill out + warm up room

Reserve your tickets on our Eventbrite page.

The Making of "Pixel Wave" Outdoor Art Installation

My design was selected to be a part of the Town of Montague's Centennial Art Trail here on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

The piece is located right before the bridge over the Montague River, so I wanted it to celebrate the natural landscape of the waterfront. I wanted it to almost blend in with the environment so rich in greens and blues (in the summer anyhow!). 

Ready to be installed on to the fence.

To create the image, I took a photo of a crashing wave and opened it in Adobe Photoshop. I altered the image to enhance the pixels, creating distinct blocks of colour.

Original hand drawn sketch on paper.

From that image, I grouped similar colours together so that I wasn't working with individual colours specific to each block. The image was further blurred in this process.

The photoshop pixel map Heather worked up with colours grouped together.

The wood blocks were made entirely out of 2x4s collected from this collapsed community hockey rink located on our property. The quonset style building was built in the late 1960s by the church down the road. Much of the wood was likely locally harvested and milled on site.

St.Georges, PEI.

I listened to podcasts while I sanded in our sunroom which was also made from wood and windows that were in the rink before it collapsed. I listened to Stuff You Should Know and Canadian True Crime (not for everyone!) podcasts.

Heather sanding.

We are grateful to our friends who actually seemed to enjoy sanding hundreds of blocks with us on their weekends! Thank you so much to Dennis and Heather, Jay and Angela! And Lenny's Mom helped too!

Have thousands of blocks to sand? Host a Block Party! photo credit: Angela Russell

Our friend Jay painting shades of seafoam.

There were blocks friggin everywhere when we got to the point of putting it all together. Managing different colours and the amount needed of each colour got a little tricky here. Our dog, Timber, likes to take chunks of wood to chew on AND we had little kids come and visit us - this meant that we were finding blocks in random places (in kitchen cupboards, on bookshelves, under the couch) weeks after the piece was installed!

I did adjust some colours after they were glued up because they didn't look right. (The computer can make a bluish-yellow colour - physically mixing those turns...you guessed it = green.).

The studio was pretty block-swamped for a few weeks.

Install day always gives you a little adrenaline rush and who knows what other hormones with all of those feelings of pride, anxiety, relief, and accomplishment in the mix. It went really smoothly with Lenny's help (when levelling, he's a very talented by eye guy!).

Lenny drilling bolt holes.

And now it is up! It is much different than I visualized in my head: the colour blocking turned out way looser than I expected. It also had to be in completed in four separate pieces due to the sections of the fence and they had to be spaced to allow for the centre gate to open. Framing each piece wasn't in the original plan, but Lenny suggested it and I am so glad he did. I love the end result and am so happy with the culmination of this group effort.

My favourite aspects are how prominent the colours change from the left to right, light to dark. I also love how much the visual changes from far away and up close. Working with colour was new to us, which was fun, but I almost wish I had integrated more bare wood into the design. Oh well, perhaps age and weathering will do that for me. 

Thank you to Lenny for his artistic opinions throughout, cutting all those blocks, putting the beast together and getting it up on that fence. Thank you to our friends for the power of time travel. We lost huge gaps of time laughing while working and made that sanding job feel like it flew by on block party days. And thank you to the Town of Montague for the strategic effort to add arts & culture to the community.

If you have any questions about the process, ask away!

The Cottage Package - Part I

So, we haven't been posting much new material lately and we haven't added any new items to our online store. That is because we have been working on furnishing two whole cottages this past winter and spring. That's 15 pieces, if I counted correctly!

Here is the first cottage, located in picturesque French River, PEI, and available for rental. You can check out the listing here. It is bright, clean, and modern, but with some original details and warmth.

These pieces were made using wood from: a cattle barn's feeding trough, a 100+ year old house that was torn down in Bridgetown, a kitchen renovation in Fortune, PE, a century old piano and pump organ, and an antique tabletop. Each piece was hand rubbed with several coats of tung oil and finished with a protective coat of beeswax.

Let's start with the main floor:

The Dining Table:

And Bench for additional seating:

The Coffee Table:

The Night Table:

And up to the second floor:

The Desk:

The Bookshelf:

And the Headboard/Night Tables:

Here are a few behind the scenes shots to prove we made them!

Lenny taking apart the bolted wood from the cattle barn.

Heather's all bundled up to apply Tung Oil.

The Desk - BEFORE

There it is! We are so grateful for our clients' trust in our creativity. We managed to discuss and reach decisions about dimensions, style, and finish all by email and facetime, as the cottage owners were in another country during the building process. The result is quite beautiful as a whole and we think Rita's French River cottage will make the perfect little Island getaway!

We will be delivering furniture for the second cottage package in the next week, so watch for Part II coming soon!