Birdcage flowers




This past summer we took a vacation down to Virginia, for a family reunion with my husband's family.  In the middle of all the craziness, we stopped to eat fast food.  And by stopped, I mean multiple cars, full of many little ones, and then we switched places and went to the one next door with a better play place.  Which meant trooping through the parking lots.  In the middle of all of the crazy, we walked through the entry of one of the fast food joints, and they had a table in the entry, with a birdcage on top.  In the birdcage they had a couple pillars, with some artificial flowers.

Aha! I thought.  THAT is how one styles a birdcage.

Because, back when I was in college, there was this little flower and gift shop, on the bottom floor of the student center.  There was also a bowling alley, but I never went bowling.  I would go hang out in the flower shop, and browse through all their fun stuff.  There was a birdcage, which I wanted desperately, because it reminded me of my summer abroad in Vienna.  But I never bought it, because what does one DO with a birdcage?  It just takes up space, and I was a college student.  I didn't have space to fill.

So, I never bought the birdcage, but seven years later, that birdcage jumped out at me.

And, when we went antique shopping on our way out of town, I snagged a cute birdcage I found.  My 4 year old was with me, and she was SURE we were going to get a bird for it.  She insisted such to the shopkeeper, who worriedly let me know that the cage wasn't actually meant for a bird.

Yes, thanks, I have something better in mind.  I bought a stem of artificial blue hydrangeas, and pulled all the sprigs of flowers off the main stem.  From the one stem, I got two flower balls, one big and one small. 

 
For the large ball, I started by laying one piece on top of another, so that their flowers intermingled.  That way the middle of my ball was nice and dense.


For the small ball, I started by just hot gluing the ends of each sprig together, until they were dense enough to form a ball.  For the large ball, I hot glued the ends to the middle of the piece I started with.



When hot gluing, it's important to wait until the glue sets.  I had to re-glue a couple pieces, either because hot glue doesn't hold well against tension, or I didn't wait long enough.  And because hot glue doesn't hold well under stress, these are purely decorative.


Once they had set a couple minutes, I carefully pushed the balls through the tiny door in the birdcage.  And then tried to arrange them by sticking my fingers through the bars.  The birdcage went up on my shelf, which is above my TV, along with a couple bird figurines I have, and a picture.


Comments

  1. I love how you noticed the bird cage at the restaurant and let it inspire you to make something beautiful for your house. I was at the same place at the same time and didn't notice it at all.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment