Playing truant

Peek-a-boo

Like a kid sulking over not having what it wants, I didn’t work on the middle attic today. The problem with Ms Moody here was I fancied an owl in the schoolroom sitting in the rafters (left-hand front attic) a little like Merlin’s Archimedes (“Once and Future King”).

(Three separate links there, sorry 😉 )

Saturday afternoon playing around

The ones I found online and really fancied were beyond my pocket so, instead of putting it out of my head I played hooky today and tried to make my own.

I studied as many pictures as I could find and printed out a few and then took photos of what I was up to until I got so involved in visualising what I was trying to make (and my fingers were sticky as well).  By then I was so carried away so there’s a gap in the photos with only the finished article to see.

I took a fine-grained cork (the sort that has a top) and eased it away from it ‘hat’

To mark out the legs I cut a V-shape across the bottom and shaped them all round

I gently cut a slit each side to indicate the front of a wing and wedged a piece of cardboard up inside to hold the slit open, breaking up barrel shape

Here’s a second cork hacked away into an approximate round and held in place by a panel pin

Dicing with breaking up the body here are 3 separate pieces of wire stuck in each leg for claws

Packets of natural coloured small feathers and a little sheep’s wool for covering the owl.

Outcome?

Both owl and I wondering why wing feather is set too far forward!

View of where the owl hides out in relation to rest of the schoolroom.

And then I broke the beam – again

Well, apart from busting the rafter set up, and with the luck and ignorance of the beginner bird builder, it’s better than I thought it might be, but I am a little peeved that I didn’t set the wing feathers further back.  The beam I can fix.

Missing info on construction

By the way, the eyes are a couple of bright beads with a sewing pin inserted to hold them in place and the head of the pin felt-tipped black.  (The tail of the pin was cut off as it emerged from the back of the poor owl’s head.)  The min beads and the natural feathers were bought from one of the doll’s house haberdashery websites.