Creating Birdhouse Charm
As an artist, it is such a privilege to work around so many creative spirits. The design team here at OESD is a great conglomerate of artistic masters and ground-breaking innovators. It would be wrong of me to say everything starts with the art because in many cases the initial inception comes from another member of our team. Also, I can always expect our digitizing team to enhance my renderings with new ideas and technical ways to fine-tune projects. Our new three-dimensional birdhouse series is a great example of both.
During one of our brainstorming moments, we were discussing what other popular themes we could pull into our 3-D Freestanding Lace world. Our lead digitizer asked a simple question, “What about spring? What about a short series of birdhouses?” He went on to unravel his thoughts on style, size and how we might construct them. We immediately scheduled it for upcoming developments, and I was excited to get started.
We wanted each birdhouse to be unique from the others, but still maintain enough commonality to show them together. They needed to be different than our Christmas Village pieces, so we decided to go with less lace in the structure, focus on the unique designs that would adorn the walls, and make them very colorful.
As I began drawing the styles for the first birdhouse, Patchwork Quilt Birdhouse #12500, I realized the intricate medallions I was creating for the walls would be great designs by themselves. So, as I rendered each wall, I made sure to save each medallion and set it aside for digitizing also. This allowed us to create some fun embroidery designs that would match the birdhouse and could be used to assimilate projects. An added value our customers would love.
With less lace involved the structure would lose a small hint of stability. In the initial sewouts, we began to see a little wrinkling in the fabric. The digitizer assigned to the project realized the answer was quite simple. If you adhere 2 layers of heavyweight stabilizer to the back of fabrics with temporary adhesive spray before hooping or placing down for tackdown and cut in place, it definitely helps with the wrinkles and holds the structure together better. This process can be applied to all of our 3D or freestanding lace creations that use appliqué, including the 2nd in the series - Damask Birdhouse #12503. It is nice to have so much quality control from the team who really enjoy their work.
I hope you will cherish these new springtime creations. We had fun putting them together. The 3rd birdhouse in the series, Daisy Birdhouse #12506, features a "Home Tweet Home" sign for the front. Don’t forget, they are easily adjusted to match your own colors and each birdhouse includes a small collection of embroidery designs that match. Also, each birdhouse comes with a new bird that is interchangeable between houses. Have some fun with these. Add some real buttons, glitz, and interesting fabrics – whatever sparks your creative hearts. I would love to see how others out there reinterpret the designs.
From my art to yours –
Tim
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