[make it] timber Owl

Another timber quicky cross stitch done. The photo's don't do this guy justice at all. The pictures don't pick up the bead colours and the metallic thread won't photograph properly - you'll just have to believe me when I say it looks good.

Before I brought this kit I already know I wasn’t going to be using any of the provided charts - though I was tempted by the very cute apple. For another day I guess. Instead I wanted my owl to have owl-y eyes and a rainbow belly. So at the same time I grabbed the kit I also grabbed some DMC metallics.

I wasn't sure which colour I wanted for the eyes so I chose DMC gold E3821 and DMC copper E301 with the idea of making a final decision once I had a good look at some owl eyes. For the belly I picked the rainbow variegated metallic DMC thread E130.

Once I started stitching I basically made it up as I went along. This sort of worked and sort of didn't. I really love the eyes but the belly is only 'okay'.

The Eyes:
I ended up choosing to use both the E3821 gold and E301 copper the for the eyes. It seemed to match real owl eyes the best. Owls have the most amazing eyes.

I used 4 strands of gold and 2 strands of copper.

Once I had the 'iris' circle of the eyes completed I slid a black sequin into the centre of each eye to be the pupil and added a black bead in the centre to hold them in place. I'm very happy with the way they turned out.

The Body:
I started out with the rainbow thread thinking of doing a spiral/fractal thing. The number of holes and the way I started made the idea fall through. I should have just re-started and tried again I think. I would have been happier with the final outcome.  But I decided to move on ahead and slowly created a star.

I then surrounded the star with copper cross stitches.  Partially to fill in the blank areas but also to try and define the star better. The problem with the wooden cross stitch frames is that they're so dark the stitching tends to get lost and can be hard to see.

The star was still fairly lost even with the copper cross stitches so I decided to add some beads. I found a small container at a second hand shop with some clear/white slightly iridescent beads that I thought should do the job and stitched them on wherever seems to fit.

And done. One cute little owl with some seriously cool eyes.