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Here's the finished product. WIP here: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/88136-blzeebub-builds-another-bird-boxbegin/&tab=comments#comment-1870132 I made this as a wedding gift for some friends. I think they'll dig it and maybe you will too. More moss! I added a stained bottom for easy attachment to a post. I also decided to enrich the wood of the door and slapped some wood stain on it for depth of color. The metal I roughed up a bit with sandpaper and sprayed with a solution of salt, hydrogen peroxide, and vinegar to speed oxidation. Though the ridge cap is galvanized steel and the chimney is aluminum, so who knows what that oxidation will actually look like! Questions, comments, critiques always welcome!

So...gonna make this a WIP though it's technically done as of yesterday. At the risk of becoming the "birdhouse guy" I opted to skip the registry of household (comm)oddities and make a bluebird nesting box for my friends' wedding. I think they'll appreciate it. I wanted a kind of whimsical, cottage style--the crazy roof being the focus. After much perusing of images of "fairy house," "magic cottage," and the like I settled on a basic design. I used a jigsaw to cut out the front and back walls from 1/2" plywood. Side walls are similarly non-square. Wood glue and finishing nails later and I had a frame. While that dried I soaked some 5mm (1/4") plywood in hot water long enough to soften it and bent it slowly onto the frame, clamped it for a day, and glued and nailed. Repeated for the other side. The two sides of ply were differently happy to take a curve so I acquiesced to the wood. Some peeling of the outer ply occurred, but later I scraped that off. For the rocks, I took some "river pebbles" from the local big box hardware store, rinsed off the dust and began applying with heavy duty landscaping adhesive (might have actually been Liquid Nails brand--I've used it before for the same effect). Let these cure and catch up with other life for a few days then on to the other sides!

He's done! I have a work in progress somewhere in the forums showing the wooden part of the birdhouse and the wire armature. This is for m grandfather, who does similar-themed artwork just for kicks--faces made of hypertufa (a mixture of cement and peat moss that I could NOT get to solidify properly--mine's straight cement) on inverted trees, giant bugs made from tools, etc. Enjoy. Comments and all that are welcome. This is my first real work with cement--I've done chests and trees and such with sculpey and GS. Cement is....different!

I posted some images of my sculpting attempts in the Show Off threads. This is the main body and armature for a birdhouse for my grandfather's 80th birthday. He sculpts in the medium of cement and sphagnum moss and builds fantastic faces on cedar roots (and other fun creations). My dilemma is that, while this needn't necessarily be a functioning birdhouse, I'd like it to not weigh 75 pounds in the end. So I'd prefer to lighten my cement mixture with sphagnum/peat moss. But whenever I add even the slightest amount of moss, it turns the end product crumbly... So I've finished this guy, my first cement sculpture, not my first birdhouse. I went with pure cement (fine) with a dash of mortar to smooth it out more. Took me a while, but I think Gramps will appreciate it. I know I'm not a world class sculptor or anything, but this was both enjoyable and challenging. Working with cement (ie: fighting gravity and hydroflow constantly, as well as dealing with occasional too-large chunks) was very strange, having worked with only GS, apoxysculpt, sculpey, and Play-Doh. If I did it right, you should be able to tell the emotion I was trying to invoke in him. Any questions, comments, suggestions, critiques are welcome! Cheers!

My wife started working on a castle birdhouse (from Michael's I believe) while I was working on my exchange diorama. She's been doing tole painting for a long time and really enjoys doing birdhouses, which is why there are a dozen or two around the house and property. After painting it she said she wanted to do some more to it, and asked about gargoyles. I didn't have any that small, but after discussing, she built a drawbridge for it. Then I remembered the Wild Elves starter for Mighty Armies that I'd picked up for her years ago. It's 15mm. So I dug that out, and this is what she ended up with, which she gave to me the other day when we were celebrating the 10th anniversary of our first date. I think she mostly just wanted to get a birdhouse into my study...