We have a parrot, who we love, even though she is a screaming jerk some of the time. So we made a parrot box. This is two hidden boxes. The top box is pine and the bottom is sapele, both fronted by a painted and woodburned maple parrot head and tail, and woodburned purpleheart wings. The wings are hinged and held closed by magnets- they open to reveal the top box. The tail is also hinged and raises to reveal the sapele bottom box. This should have been pretty straightforward, but it turned out that there were some tricky engineering issues, especially once Tom decided it HAD to have that second box on the bottom (he was right). And then it turned out that  multiple coats of lacquer were needed. I don't think the picture or video do it justice- the green head and tail are very sparkly, as I added iridescent dust to the paint. We liked this so much we're repeating the experiment with a goldfish box- stay tuned for it in the next few days.

See  video below of it opening. I am VERY impressed with my ability to upload a video.

Parakeets are joyous creatures- they're always so damned busy and sunny, and I love their sounds. I've had several over the course of my life, and they've always been wild type green males. I guess I like the mutant colors, but I've always been a sucker for that fresh, spring green stomach and black and yellow patterned back. My childhood guy, Tweety (I was a kid when I named him, OK?) died when I was a junior in high school. He was an awesome bird, tame and funny. Later, I got one, Oliver, whom my mother stole from me because she loved him so much. He liked to bathe in wine glasses (with water in them!) and swing on the cords of the blinds. When he died, my mother swore she'd never have another bird, but she's  reconsidering now. Some years ago, we got our first defective parakeet, Jeff, who was the first unpleasant parakeet I'd ever met. We hated him and he hated us, and when our dog ate him we were mostly just mad at the dog (who is now well-trained to avoid household birds). Now, we have Pico ( in picture), who is in the process of becoming tame, but who still mostly feels revolted by us. We got him as a pet for our parrot, but she tried to eat him, so now he's our pet. He'll come out and eat from our hands, but we can tell he still feels like we're just gross and he'd rather have no truck with us. Sometimes taming a bird is a slow process.

So we are making a parakeet cage box to memorialize our love for these little creatures. I etched the keets onto two pieces of glass, and Tom is building this canarywood (seemed appropriate) and purpleheart box for it. There was a bit of difficulty engineering it to have bars, but it is turning out to be lovely. The top will have a cage-like handle for a lift. Parakeet lovers- it will soon be for sale!
We like this look so much that we're going to make an aquarium box the same way (but obviously without bars), and I also think this would be a good look for a "forest" box- with trees etched onto glass and maybe woodburned onto two wood sides. We'll see if this pans out.
And right now my parrot is being SUCH a sweet girl- a rarity. She's rubbing her head underneath my chin and cooing to me. Perhaps we'll do a parrot box, too.