what's on the bunny's workbench?

Here's a project I'm finishing up this week for the window at one of the sweetest little bookstores I know, Green Bean Books! It's where I bought the penguins book I made the figures for last Christmas, and since then, I've gotten to know the owner Jennifer and we cooked up a plan for a nice window display with the theme of birds.

This will be my biggest tree ever, filled with birds in the branches. There are also a lot of interesting recycled materials in this piece that I'll walk you through. First of all, a friend recently gave me a bunch of old piano keys, so I used pieces of them to make the songbirds. They will be various colors and breeds of birds.

Next, since it's a bookstore, I decided to make the leaves out of old Scrabble tiles so there will be a subtle letter pattern to each one. The finished pieces will be two or three shades of green.

Even the tree and base itself is from known found objects! The trunk is a broom handle, and the base is one of those wood bowls you commonly see at thrift stores in these parts. I love the natural bark sides, so I filled it with heavy wood and flipped it upside down. I'll make one of my reading figures to lean up against the base, engrossed in his favorite book. In the next week, I'll paint it a grassy green and fill it with daisies.

I'll make sure to take more pictures next weekend when it's done!