Bird Feeder ID

We get some pretty interesting backyard visitors down here in Florida, especially during the colder migrating months. What better way to attract such traffic than with something bright, colorful, and eye catching?? No need for fussing around with the build on this end though, Michael’s to the rescue! This cute little Bird Feeder did the just the trick leaving my design availability wide open. Breaking down the flight path of a bird in still frame creates a repetition of movement throughout the wild circus color scheme bringing the eye in for closer inspection for a longer feeding stay.

Tornado Child Terror

Never before has a costume personified a 7 year old better. The added features of light and storm audio made it interactive, precisely the capabilities it needed to raise the buying power for any kid. Make it a toy. He filled the role perfectly. Here he has gathered his tornado terror power and summoned, by the strength of his sheer will, the mighty storm you see before you.

Supplies needed:

  • Cylindrical pop-up hamper (partial to this ‘Real Living’ brand I found at Big Lots for a few bonus features)

  • Batting

  • Stuffing

  • Grey tulle

  • Hot Glue (partial to Gorilla Glue sticks)

  • Embroidery thread

  • Metal wiring

  • Circuit Playground Bluefruit

boy tornado halloween costume lightning storm rural landscape

I’m so glad I came upon this because it coincidentally came with a couple of really handy features like, handles (repurposed as armholes), and a Velcro strap to adjust the collapsible height.

pop-up cylindrical hamper upright top wire exposed

Released half of the wiring in the top structure, but did not remove it from the seam completely. Cut out the flooring panel for the torso to fit. The opening is already perfectly structured to fit a head as it would for a T-shirt opening. However, it did end up slipping a little bit on a 7 year old. I recommend sewing closed the head opening slightly at the shoulders and place elastic or spandex by the neck.

pop-up hamper upright slightly collapsed pinned at base circles drawn on top left and right

Safety pin the base to the appropriate torso height. Mark the opening for the arm holes toward the top of the mesh. I put mine underneath the handles to repurpose later.

Embroidery thread had the staying power to hold in this bottom. I raised the base to where it needed to land on his body so he could still walk and enjoy trick-or-treating (been there, done that), and cut a slit in the mesh by the Velcro fasteners (this brand happened to already come with) to hold its collapsing height together.

Cut circles for armholes, and flip the handles under to sew along the mesh holes.

The released wire at the top needed to be adjusted to accommodate a wider-mouthed funnel shape. Using the end cap on the wire to lock it into place, I pulled the wire out as wide as it would allow, and locked both end cap and wire together in their new position under the seam with embroidery thread and hot glue. This didn’t give enough of a dramatic shape so I added a sweeping shape on either side with additional wiring. Secure these pieces to the main wire on top by looping the ends of the sweeping shapes to the main wire and hot gluing that connection to keep from slipping.

Attach batting to the form. Hot glue for the win! If you are still using standard hot glue sticks, I highly recommend splurging on the the Gorilla Glue brand because that stuff is definitely worth the extra $1 or $2 sticking power. After this stage, I added lighting with chainable NeoPixel LEDs repurposed from a mac-n-cheese costume that left some yellow paint residue. These were mainly hidden underneath stuffing to give off a glowing lightning storm effect.

tornado funnel structure covered in spiraling LED light strip loose batting grey tulle

Embroidery Thread, Grey Tulle, and Stuffing.

Loosely sew (or hot glue) the tulle to the form in a spiral tube shape and fill each layer with stuffing.

And finally, add on your amalgam from your toy box the tornado has picked up by attaching with you guessed it, your trusty hot glue. Tornado Destructor, ready!

Tampa Outdoor Artists- Rivercrest Park

After my last plein air adventure, the Adobe Sketch app had some pretty significant updates.  Brushes now have more customization and allow you to use a few features also available in the desktop app.  Brushes can now be fine tuned in their opacity, stroke direction, etc, but the layers can also now be adjusted and reorganized as well.  Still waiting on layer effects to be implemented, but I'm really happy with the updates Adobe is making for their sketching app.

 

I took some reference photos (since the little man can only handle watching me draw trees for so long) and brought the start of my plein air sketch into Photoshop when I got home to go back into the piece in further detail. I played around with some high contrast saturation texture layers, more detail in the moss and bark, and masking brushes.  I'd been looking at a few digital artists which made me realize that the piece lacked a strong focal point so I tried a few more attempts at texture painting to rectify that. I love the possibilities Photoshop has and now that they're giving their app more flexibility the possibilities are even more attainable.