I don’t know if you’ve heard about the CEO of GoDaddy, Bob Parsons, killing an elephant in Africa and posting it on YouTube. Now this is a very controversial subject and I’m sure there are two sides to the story, but even after watching the video I found the whole thing, well, disgusting. Surely he could have spent his money relocating the elephants rather than killing one. Surely some of that money spent could have gone to feed those hungry villagers. It really left me with a sick feeling in my stomach.

I am not a hunter, but I am not fundamentally opposed to hunting. Many of my good friends hunt an elk every year in Jackson. But they do not do this for sport. They do not mount his head on their wall. They haul the animal out of the wilderness on horseback and eat the meat all winter. There are also an estimated one million elk in North America alone. There are an estimated 400,000 African elephants remaining in the world. In the 1930’s there were between five and ten million living in the wild.

I find the “sport” of big game hunting revolting.

By complete coincidence I was in Anthropologie about a month ago buying my oldest daughter some birthday gifts when I came across some paper mache trophy heads. The first one I noticed I thought was a goat, but it turned out to be a gazelle (that looks like a goat). I happened to stop the woman who was the manager of the store to enquire about them and we got to talking about them and somehow got onto chickens and my blog and well, pretty soon we were like best friends. There were all kinds of different animal “trophy” heads available. It turns out they are made in the Haitian town of Jacmel with recycles cement bags and book pages. I loved that. I knew immediately what I wanted to do with them. I wanted to hang them in my office. Unfortunately I don’t have an office at the moment, so I bought them with plans of making them if I ever do get the office we’ve had plans drawn up for, or move. I may be dead before either of those two things actually happen, but that’s the way my mind works. I left the store with a gazelle (goat) and a rhino head. I went back the next day for the elephant, as he was just too beautiful not to have as well.

However, this elephant kill by the GoDaddy CEO brought the whole idea back to the front of my little brain, and I decided now was as good a time as any to make them.

I knew I wanted beautiful wood to mount them on, which meant a trip up to an amazing lumber mill I visited a few months ago called Berkshire Products in Sheffield, Massachusetts. It’s a 2-hour drive up there, and once you’re there it’s easy to get lost in all of the amazing woods that they have there. That consumed my day on Friday.



I left there with 3 beautiful pieces of wood. An incredible redwood burl for the elephant, a claro walnut burl for the gazelle, and a beautiful maple burl for the rhino. I also left with the most stunning piece of live-edge quilted cottonwood and some purple heart to make a table with, but that’s for another time.

I spent the weekend sanding and finishing the wood. First I sanded them all with by belt sander. Then to get the surface really smooth I sanded them with my random orbit sander.



Then I applied some pre-stain to the best side of each of them to bring the color out in the wood, and then I applied several layers of matte varnish, sanding lightly between each coat.

The trophy heads were flat on the back and had a simple hole poked in them for hanging, so I decided long screws at an angle coming from the back of the wood would be the easiest way to hang them. I added an additional screw and hole in the back of each head for stability. I used a countersink drill bit so the screws lay flat on the back of the wood.


So my dining room got a makeover today. I like it.

Now in my opinion this is just so much more tasteful than having a real animal head on your wall. It will be a good conversation starter too I’d imagine.

Take that Bob Parsons.

Saturday night my husband was out of town so I took advantage of a night with no lacrosse games, dance classes or riding lessons and we did the 4th class in my series of art classes I’m giving my kids. This week’s lesson was on collage.

This all started because my husband wanted me to sign Maia up for another drawing class like she took last year, and I, frankly, just couldn’t bear the thought of dragging my  kids to one more thing. And why should just Maia get art class when all of my kids enjoy art? I figured for the price of sending 3 kids to art class I could buy all of the art supplies I needed and give them little “snapshots” of lots of different kinds of art. Plus, then we would own the supplies so they could explore all of these different mediums whenever they wanted to after that.

While we got off to a rocky start by being unprepared and overambitious in the first class, the next two have been wildly successful and I find my kids, Evan in particular, asking to do them whenever we have some free time. I love that. Now I’m not a trained artist, but I am artistic and I know a little about a lot of different art forms. Certainly enough to teach my kids the basics about them. For the fine drawing and painting classes they’ll have to go to an art school.

While I must admit I’ve never sat down and done collage in any formal sense, I was more than adequately prepared supply-wise. I’m drowning in papers, doo-dads, stamps, paints, buttons, stickers, scrapbooking supplies, fabrics, ribbons, etc. And I did order two great books on the subject. One was called Collage Lab by Bee Shay, and the other Collage Journeys by Jane Davies. I found both of these books inspirational and informative. Before we started “class” I gave each of my kids the Collage Lab book to look through and had them pick out their favorite one or two pieces to give them time to think about what they wanted to do.  I also prepared the thin art boards I had bought for them ahead of time, just as a time-saving measure.




The kids didn’t really need a lot of direction for this class, which was great. India and I both loved a collage in the Collage Lab book that had a bird in a nest made of printed strips of paper. While we both did that in our collage, they’re different because I used quotes that were appropriate for me, and India used quotes that she loved.

Here’s my bird’s nest.



And here’s India’s bird’s nest.



India’s finished collage.



Evan’s finished collage.


Maia’s finished collage



And my finished collage.



I was having so much fun I grabbed some photos of mine I’d just had printed and started working on a series of collage postcards that was really fun to do.



And then I framed one of my favorite photos from my recent trip to Texas. I cut a custom mat our for the frame out of foam-core, covered it with a beautiful rust-colored rice paper, and then embellished that with different fibers I had. I love the way it came out.



I added a saying from my post of that photo as photo of the day, and I sanded the edges of the photo to soften it and give it a more aged look.



So another successful art class done. There’s a lot more to learn and discover about this collage stuff, so I suspect we’ll be re-visiting this a few more times.