Monday, February 13, 2012

Luv Birds

I am totally and completely obsessed with pinterest.  Oh, the hours that I have wasted....
However, I also have actually pinned and then made/carried out/done many of the things on there.


One project that I completed about two weeks ago in honor of valentine's day was a little love bird pillow.  It is actually sold on etsy and looks gorgeous, with all the birds being hand stitched, but at $55, it was well out of my price range.

Plus, I enjoy crafting so took a couple evenings and one nap time putting two of these bad boys together for Valentine's Day!
I started off by picking up some linen material from the bargain room at Fabric Depot for just $3.50 a yard (compared to $10.50+ normally), washed and ironed it.  Next, I measured the two pillows and free cut (too lazy to bring out the rotary cutter that I typically use) out fabric to fit.  I made the back pieces 6" longer on one side and then cut it in half.  This allowed me to form a pocket that the pillow could come in and out out of when the pillow was all sewed up and saved me the extra work of putting in velcro or a zipper.  Easy Peasy.


I then made a little template (~1"x1") for the bird using a piece of cardstock I had lying around, cut it out and traced about a million birds onto several different colors of felt.  I then cut those out, flipped them over and drew eyes with a sharpie.  To make the "wings", I used a white paint marker.  However, next time I would nix the paint marker and just use some fabric paint and a small paint brush.  The fabric marker tip got destroyed and ran out of ink while using it on felt.




After all of that, I stuck some cardboard in between the front and back of the pillow fabric pieces to protect from bleed thrus.  Then I just started playing around with layouts (using the picture I found on etsy for most of my inspiration) and color on the square pillow.  On the rectangular pillow, I used a tape measure to make lines with my trusty sharpie and thought it would be cute to add "love" in the lines as well as "est. 2006" because that is the year we got married.  I then used craft glue to spread glue and stick on all the birds.  I love them, especially when I only spent about $6 for 2 pillows!  not sure how they will hold up but should store easily and work well enough being that I will only use them about 1 month per year. 

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