Collaged Row Houses - Home Tweet Home

Here we are again, another challenge from PDA. A set of five little row houses with a theme of "Home Tweet Home".

I was stumped by this at first, of course it had to be about birds - didn't it? Animals in  general and birds in particular are not something that I would use as a main subject for my collages. I am far more at home with people. I like to be able to tell a story based on their actions or facial expressions. So the theme gave me lots to think about and not a few sleepless nights ( well OK I am exaggerating a little for litterary effect, LOL). I was unsure how to go with this theme until I had the idea of using a window. I would view the birds thru a window and put people in front of the window as if they were carrying on their real life. In fact I turned this idea on its head for one of the pieces for humerous effect, I have a strange sense of humour at times. Here is a shot of the little row houses lined up on my stairs at home.

The stairs forms a great background for this as the carpet is a darg green, but that's another story, as they say.

each little row house was to be within a particular size, no more than 7.5 inches tall and 5.5 inches wide and no less than 5 inches tall and 3.5 inches wide. I made my set a mixture of sizes between these limits. The basic shape of each house was cut out from matt board to give a good rigid basis for the piece. I selected some backing paper/card which I had been sent by a fellow member of PDA with a swap and covered the boards with this with a turn-around at each edge to give a neat appearance. The back of each row house was also layered with a different paper to the front for contrast.

"Buy My Flowers"

I found some creative commons licenced pictures of windows on Flickr, and printed them from my PC, enough for all the row houses. I also downloaded images of birds from the free images available on PDA, and printed them also. The other images are mostly from free collage sheets which I have collected from those offered by Kim Newberg on the PDA site or other sites and blogs by Kim.

"I Did Pay The Rent"

Most of the set had birds layered between the window frames and a backing paper for contrast. However the above piece was different. The birds were "outside" and the person was "inside" the house.

"Yes, I Will Phone"

Most of the titles are chosen to reflect the people in ront of the window frames. As I said I like to tell a story and to this effect, I select elements which are in some way ( often tenuously) connected and then arrange them in a way which I find pleasing and taking note of composition. The geometry of the space I had for placing the images below and around the windows made this a little more difficult than usual for me here.

"Hello Beautiful"

I also used a little stamping here and there to fill in a few little spaces inconspicuously. A pity this image is spoilt by the effect of the flash on the young girl's face, it was a glossy image.

"The Farmer"

You will notice that all of the set have a metal charm at the apex of the roof line which is itself emphasised by various complementary ribbons / papers.

I said I had a few problems with this theme but at the same time as it took me at least a little out of my comfort zone I really enjoyed the challenge. Of course most of my mixed media stuff is around ATC's so the much larger size also gave me a little more scope than usual. Thanks for the challenge Kim!