Swallow

Finally I have found a use for my swallow silhouettes…
The Small Town Bags are still packaged in the classic brown paper bags but now they are decorated with cut-out map swallows.

Using my pile of mis-printed maps I cut miniature versions of my wall-art swallows and spray-glued them to the paper bags. To close the bags I use an old stamp (torn off from sent letters).

My five favourite things about this new wrapping are:

1) The look and effect I think is really great.
2) I am taking a boring brown paper bag and making it special.
3) I am recycling, reusing and upcycling.
4) All Wren packaging now has a common theme: maps.
5) The irony of this packaging: maps, swallows, bag traveling to you…..

Silhouettes have an amazingly calming effect. I have two silhouettes pasted on my bedroom walls.

I came across this poor cat silhouette, all tattered and torn sorting through my mom’s old school stuff (she was a Grade 2/Sub b teacher) and became transfixed with it. It was so beautiful I couldn’t let it be thrown away. So…I got hold of some charcoal card, traced the shape and cut it out. It now sits on my skirting board and every time I see it, it’s simple beauty calms me.

The other cut-out I have are three swallows.

I have a fascination with maps and I hate the way that old maps, artworks, just get chucked away. My first idea to ‘rescue’ them was to create paper bags out of them. But this never materialized and I still have a stack of old maps under my bed. At the same time as this was going on I was busy doing a textile design with birds and loved the shapes I was coming across. I choose the swallow silhouette, worked on it a bit and cut it out of the maps. They now fly above my bed and fill a wall that would ordinarily be quite boring and plain. I love the correlation created by the swallow and the map. I have gotten a lot of compliments about them and really all they were was an experiment to fill a space when I had no money and little time. I have grown to love them and think I will keep them when I move one day.