Whoooo sees an owl?

Sorry, just couldn't resist titling my post like that!  I have a friend who works next door to me and she is super sweet, and today is her birthday!  Her nickname is "Hootie" and she loves owls.  I've done some research, and found a link to a tutorial to make an owl with a styrofoam ball.  I took a few pictures to show you some of the tips I came up with as well.  I started by cutting what I felt was more than enough feathers, not!  I started with 60 turquoise, and 30 fuschia feathers, but had to add another 20 to the turquoise pile.  But, the ingenious part (can you tell I'm pretty proud of myself?!) was to use my Stocking Stuffer die from Stampin' Up to cut the feathers, look!

Pretty cool, huh?!  I trimmed off the "socket" part of the bulb, and voila, they were feathers!  So, I also cut 2 triangles for the ears, and 2 different sized circles for the eyes.  I used my circle Nestabilites because I'm a little anal, and love things to be perfectly cut!  My circles are approx. 1 5/8" and 1 1/8".  I also used a 4" styrofoam ball.  Here's the felt pieces I started with.  You also notice that I cut a triangle for the nose, but later decided to use my die and cut a new one!

One of the tips the other blogger gave was to add a nickel to the bottom for stabilization, this came in handy, here's a shot of how it looked in the beginning

I started with the belly feathers, and just used a glue gun to adhere to the ball.  I put a little dab of glue at the top of the feather so the rest of the feather would be loose.  I have to say the trickiest part was getting the rows to be straight, but just do your best, and you can always go back and pry 'em off if they are a little crazy looking!  I should have taken a pic of her head before I put the eyes on, but I was on a roll, and didn't do it, sorry!  I added feathers all the way up to where her eyes are, and the nice thing about using the rough styro ball is your felt will "cling" to it a bit so you can see how to place things before you glue.  Here's a close up of her eyes so you can see where her "feathers" are.

Which also ensures you have everything covered that should be!  Her ears are the triangles of felt, and I just pleated them in my fingers to see how they looked before adding glue to set the pleat, I then trimmed the extra felt, and then glued them to the back side of her eyes.  Here's a close up pic of her ear.

Hopefully my lack of pictures will be ok since I gave you the other link and she definitely has more pics! Ok, are you ready to see the final project?  I'll let you know what Shelly named her later!