Red owl ornaments

To go with the stellar bright red sunburn I got on my feet today, here are my red and pink owl ornaments. I was helping Jyoti with a yard sale this morning...nice to be outdoors but forgot sunblock on my feet! It itches!

 

Also here are some of the other owls I'm working on...

 

 

 

Outdoor owl photo shoot!

There are lots of pretty cherry blossoms near my place, so I figured I'd re-photo some of my owl ornaments outside.

 

Next: new red owls!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday today! I spent a nice leisurely morning doing photos of some of my new creations. Hoot!

 

 

My Thanksgiving plans include going out to FANCYDINNER, which is something my friend Brie and I have been doing for 5 years now...we pick a different restaurant each year and get dressed up and go out for a really nice meal. Most places have traditional Thanksgiving fare on the menu (which Brie likes but I don't much care for) in addition to their regular menus, and something hilarious and awkward always happens.  Two different years, the the lights went out in the restaurant! So I'm looking forward to some great food, good times, and no dishes to wash! :)

 

materials for hoot owl ornaments: Eco-felt, DMC, thread, ribbon, quilt batting

Fall is here...and projects in progress

Yay fall! The leaves are just starting to change and it's getting cooler finally (man I hate the heat). Other things to love about fall:

• Boots weather! I can finally wear all the awesome boots I bought this year.
• Halloween. Jenny and I purchased some crazy costumes online so we can at last go as ABBA...although I'm not sure if we'll get any guys to agree to dressing up as Bjorn or Benny...
• Candy corn season! I always forget how much I love candy corn until it hits the stores again in the fall. Along with some coworkers, I ate a whole bag of candy corn this week and it was delicious!

This inspired me to finally start on a project I'd had in mind for at least a year--a candy corn purse.. Here's the purse in progress...I decided to go with a variety of candy sizes.

Picking out the fabric for the lining should also be interesting. I'm thinking either a black/white print or something with both yellow and orange. I want to finish it this week to have it in my shop for Halloween.

I finished my second felt cockatiel softie in time for Bill and Allison's wedding a few weeks ago...

This one presented a little more of a challenge as I was trying to make it look like a pearl cockatiel. I used sticky felt to make the white spots on the back.

I also managed to stitch a bunch of new pins this week (while watching lots of bad tv, of course--current favorites are Say Yes to the Dress, What Not to Wear, and Millionaire Matchmaker).

I should have the new pins available in my etsy shop shortly!

Felt cockatiel softie!

So a friend who's getting married contacted me a while ago to make some cockatiel felt sculptures to use on top of a birdcage at the wedding. What a cute idea!

The couple sent me a picture of their birds, who are "whiteface" cockatiels, an interesting mutation that doesn't have the bright orange cheeks and yellow face that are most common. I wanted to make my felt birds to match theirs as much as possible.

Surprisingly, I did not have a "craft fail" at my first try.  Perhaps this is because I have been around my birds so much--I know pretty well how they are shaped! While I've made some cockatiels out of felt before, they weren't totally 3-D so I thought this might be a challenge.

I totally love how he came out! He's got a puffy belly and the wings are a little bit movable, so you can hold them out a little bit to make a "cape" like Edy does when he's happy. The beak is a little bit adjustable too--couldn't decide if I wanted to sew it down closer to the face or not.

I really wanted to make the crest lifelike so I used two layers of felt to create the "feathers." His tail is still a little bendy despite three layers of felt tail-feathers.

Here's a view of him from the top/back.

And sitting on my couch, from a distance it looks like a real bird! Haha.

Here are some of the supplies I used to create my cockatiel soft sculpture...fiberfill, embroidery floss, and gray, black, and white felt. You can also see some of my templates, which should make the second softie go much faster--wing templates, crest templates, underside of the tail. The light gray felt tube on the right will be used for the head, and the dark gray tube for the body.

I did not add feet to this softie...once I hear back from the bride & groom we'll see if the feet are necessary. I thought it would be pretty complicated to add them, and might require purchasing some floral wire, which I tend to stab myself with a lot by accident.

More soon on cockatiel #2!