Thursday, October 1, 2009

Hoot hoot hooray

Hi there,

this week Makeesha Byl's challenge was colour based. Here is her combo.


For some reason when I was mulling over ideas of what to do, while putting my Mr 1.5 to bed, and my mind turned to owls. The colour combo was a good match - yes but why owls? and then I remembered that I had gone for a walk around the annual flower festival we have here in Canberra (Floriade), apparently its the biggest in the Southern hemisphere, and it is quite spectacular. Anyway at the little shopping village at the festival I went past a little shop selling an iron worked owl (very cute) with his wings out spread and sitting on top of a 1.5 M long pole. It would have been just lovely to have him flying over the garden at home, and it was my DH's birthday so I seriously contemplated buying him - except I would have had to carry him all the way back to work!! a tad awkward to say the least. However if he is still there next time we all go for a visit he might just come home with us. So that's where the idea for the owl came from and here he is.



I've seen lots of cute animals made from punched shapes and I'm sure I could have found an owl out on the web but I decided to have a go myself first and see how I went - and I reckon he turned out quite well. I used the large oval to make his head, then nipped a dip out using my 5 petal punch, his eyes are made layering 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4 inch punched circles. His ears are two of the petals from the 5 petal punched flower. His body is another large oval, covered with overlapping "feathers" made using the small oval punch each cut in half and then the bottom edge sponged with chocolate chip ink. For his wings I used the large oval punch to punch one oval from Good Morning Sunshine DSP then cut it in half. Then using the small oval punch I punched out three ovals, one was cut exactly in half the other two roughly at one third of the way - so that I had a small, bigger and biggest "feather" for each wing. His feet are just three of the petals cut from one of the Spring Bouquet flower punch. He is perched on branch (narrow twill tape pressed into my choc chip ink pad), and leaves were just cut freehand from old olive DSP stock. The clouds were created by sponging some Not Quite Navy ink carefully over the top of a punched out scallop circle. Finally I pinched the "Hoot Hoot Hooray" from the SU set " Owl Together Now" and added "its your birthday" for the sentiment . I just used my mini alphabet set to stamp it out on scraps of Very Vanilla using the challenge colours and there you have it.

Recipe:
sorry about this but have an overabundance of sick chlidren this week so I don't have the time or hands to type this in, any questions just ask.

Thanks for visiting.

Kim

3 comments:

  1. oh my goodness!!! is that a super owl or what?? You are seriously very very clever, I bet your little ones loved your owl too. I really love the way you coloured the twill tape and knotted the one end so it looks like a branch!!I am going to have a go at making him when I have my grandkids out for a sleepover. We live on a farm and there is a mr and mrs owl that sit on a little branch (which is sort of like an owl love seat, there is only room for the 2 of them!) in one of our big trees and the kids love to see them, so I think they will love making their very own mr and mrs owl too. Thanks for such a fab idea, I am so impressed!! Good job!!Hope your little people are soon well and you feel like you can come up for air. Its very busy when you have sick kids hey?
    Sally :)

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  2. Very clever Kim! Your Mr Owl looks great.

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  3. Hi Kim - this is such a FABULOUS idea! You're so clever! He's adorable and so life-like! Hope you're little ones feel better soon, Kate x

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Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!