Thursday, December 17, 2009

Project #16 - Owl Mobile (finished)

Well luckily I had a sneaking suspicion that this owl mobile was going to be really super cute, or else I may have given up with all of the problems I encountered (all my own fault, of course). See how cute the owls are:

The first problem I encountered was not being able to find any socks that I liked that matched the colour scheme of our nursery. Once I did find a pair, I couldn't find another pair to match that first pair. Then (because I had made one owl when I bought the first pair of socks), I couldn't find the second sock in that first pair when it came time to making the owls *sigh*. I went out and bought another pair of socks the same and actually found another pair I liked - problems solved.

Well, time got away from me and when I finally got around to making some more of the owls (after purchasing the pattern off the craft schmaft website), I couldn't find that second pair of socks I'd bought in the first sock print. I figured that surely one of the 3 socks would turn up eventually, so I would just continue working on the owls by selecting fabrics for the outer wing parts. That should be easy, right? Wrong!

I bought a couple of fabrics that I thought would suit (and that I could use for bibs if I didn't end up using them on the owls) and out of the 6 fabrics I bought I only liked one of them once sewn onto the sock owls, so I still needed another fabric for the other coloured owl. I went back and bought an additional two pieces of fabric, but only tried one of the fabrics because I was certain that the other one really wouldn't work well. I didn't like that one piece I tried either.

I decided that I wasn't going to buy any more fabric so I had another rummage around in my fabric stash to see if there was anything suitable. After trying another four fabrics I finally caved and tried that single piece of fabric I had dismissed as being unsuitable. As you would expect, I decided that fabric was the one to use! Here is a picture of an owl using this troublesome fabric on the wings:

While I was searching for fabrics I did strike it lucky and found one of the missing 3 socks I needed, right at the bottom of the bag of unpainted dolls house furniture (which of course is where everyone should keep their socks?!?!). Things were starting to look up. I finished all four owls and so just needed to assemble the mobile itself.

The owls are hung off sanded back sticks tied together, so last week I embarked on a 40 minute journey to find the most perfect sticks ever known to man. I finally found them, headed home and had gotten three quarters of the way through sanding them before the carpal tunnel kicked in and I had to call it quits.

Well then I got sick and ordered by Matty to take it easy so another week passed before I decided that it was time to get this mobile finished. I headed out to the shed to get my sticks, only to find that one of them was missing. I figured it had been knocked onto the floor or moved, but after a solid 15 minutes of searching I headed back inside and asked Matty if he had seen it in his travels. He advised me that he hadn't seen it, oh hang on, yes he had. His dad had used it to stir up the paint on the weekend and most definitely thrown it in the bin once he'd finished! It was at this point that I almost threw it all in. Well I did throw the stick and all the owls across the room in a fit of rage, but retrieved them 20 minutes later after I had calmed down a little.

Last night I went on a 'stick hunt' again but didn't have to go far as my sister had a stick that she had used to toast marshmallows with at our last bonfire and boy was it a nice stick (as far as sticks go). Matty, feeling guilty that his dad had destroyed part of my craft project, helped to cut the sticks to length and sand them back. Finally, we strung the mobile together and attached the owls. Here is how it turned out:

Pretty damn cute if I may say so myself! I am hoping Matty is going to hang it in the nursery tonight and I think that will inspire me to get a move on with all of the other nursery tasks I have!

Here is a link to the other post on the owl mobile:

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