This is my third year - last year I did this
The year before I did this
This year I got my piece late, a month late, and I had totally misjudged the size of it. So my first plan to make it all cute and rolling on casters went out the window the day I drove it home. It took up all the extra space in my car and I had to have a helper remove it for me. In fact, it turns out that I just need a helper in general for everything so good thing I have one of those on hand.
Anyway, once Richard put the whole thing together and we returned from our visit up north, the creative process train left the station.
It started off looking very generic and sort of cheap.
I decided that I wanted it to light up because I'm always so envious of the ones that have electricity. We figured out how to light it up, yah twinkle lights!
Then I found a way to mask the lights with sanded plexi glass.
Oh ya - I stained it brown too....
Then I thought it would be cool to do something like this, but try finding a map that is only printed on one side. It looked ok but not really cool.
I left that part of it for a while and worked on the body. Trees! I love tress especially in photography and drawing (and real life too). I masked out some of the stained finish with contact paper and batik wax. Why batik wax? Well obviously it's because I get to go to Value Village and pick up an electric skillet and old iron and then I get to melt wax! What fun - OK that part probably wasn't really necessary but it's fun.
After the masking I painted the whole thing silver. Then I did some more masking with wax and then I painted, well more like slapped, some white paint on in a general sort of way.
I got a little carried away with the wax. I painted it on the inside, dripped it all over the sides - hey this is an intuitive process, you just have to believe that it's all going to work out in the end - and it's fun!
After a night in wax it was time for the removal - easy, just get an old iron and some newspaper and the wax will lift off leaving a lovely layered painting - or it will melt the newsprint into the side your furniture leaving Sunday's headlines mirrored across your lovely tree. Ok one, just one, crying bout and a very good helper later you figure out that scraping the wax off leaves a really cool shiny finish that makes the silver parts look like actual metal. Ya, I totally thought that was going to happen.
Then, my true inspiration came to light - literally. While in PG we walked in a place called Forest for the World. Quite a nice name considering the world needs more forests and I captured some wonderful fall birches with my camera. Having access to a large format printer, I cropped one of my images, printed it and used in place of the map on the plexi glass.
Richard put all the lights in and replaced the crappy door knob with a cool hardware thing that I found at our local hardware/art supply store. We plugged it in and viola!
photo by Dean Davis photography
Forest for the World - it's sort of a forest for your living room version of the real Forest for the World - maybe that's my statement...- anyway, it's done, I feel good about it. I usually worry that my piece won't sell but I'm not really worried about that - I mean maybe it won't sell but who cares...
