Saturday Night Crafting

Originally posted Nov. 3rd, linked Nov. 24th to A Soft Place to Land for DIY Day.

Saturday night turned into quite a productive evening for me.  I wanted to make a Thanksgiving/Fall banner and a little owl (since there was no way I could justify paying for either).

I found this owl on Google images and just printed out his outline.  I taped the pattern to some foam (FUNKY FOAM to be exact) and just cut him out.

I think he's quite adorable, what do you think?

Next, I got to working on a Thanksgiving banner.  I wanted to make it two-sided so that we could see it coming and going from the kitchen to the den (we have a split level house so there's a little gap by the stairs going down to the den from the kitchen).

Here is the work in progress.  I only sort of traced the pattern for the triangles and then I cut the letters out free-hand.  I always look at templates and tutorials for this sort of thing but then end up doing it my own way.  I'm a rebel.

I did the letters for one side with scrapbook paper and the other side with the rest of the foam from the owl to give it a little texture.  Then I sewed each piece together (I decided to take this out and just hang it up with some green rafia I had hanging around.

Here it is looking from the den up to the kitchen

And down from the kitchen into the den

*Warning: If you choose to enlarge the last picture and brighten them up to see the background, I take no responsibility for the mess in the background.

It took me a couple hours to make but that could be because I was watching the World Series while I was doing it.  So...what about you?  Do you follow instructions exactly or do you usually do your own thing?