My Steampunk Snowy Owlette

This is my small Snowy Owl, with Steampunk accessories.  I made him out of the craft fleece ($9 a yard from JoAnn Fabrics) with white felt for the wings and tail, a plastic insert down the center of the tail for stiffness, tan felt with 14 gauge wire for the feet, safety lock eyes and a small oval of black felt for the beak, and of course stuffing enough to fill the bird. 

The beak is semi-stuffed, with sculpting done as it’s sewn on, to make it arch up nicely.  The wings are just two layers, not stuffed, with a third layer of ‘feathers’ added to the top. They are split up the center and cover the area where the tail attaches.  The tail is two layers too, with black stitching sewn up the length to indicate feathers.   I used black acrylic paint to add the spots on the wings and tail – you can’t use a brush for this, the fibers won’t take the paint too well that way.  What I do is use the end of a toothpick and ‘roll’ the paint on.  That gets it placed right where I want it and I can work it into the fabric nicely.  ONLY the wings and tail get the markings.  The black around the eyes is a circle of black felt slipped on over the prong at the back of the eye.

With using 14 gauge wire I can make sure that the feet are firm and bendable, but won’t break when the wire is bent (it’s plastic coated, the kind used for electrical wiring).  I buy the wire by the 500 foot roll and it usually takes me 3 years to go through an entire roll.  It cuts nice with a standard wire cutters and I use a needle nose pliers to bend the ends into a loop so they won’t poke through the fabric.  It’s quick and easy. The feet on this one got a bit long, I shortened them up on the other birds.

The plastic insert is something called Kydex plastic, I bought a huge 4’ by 9’ sheet at a local plastics manufacturer and have been slicing pieces off it with a scissors for maybe 4 years now. It ran me $60 for the sheet and it’s great to work with. It’s stiff, can bend but won’t crease or snap in two, absolutely perfect to use for stiffness when I need it. I can round the ends so it won’t stress the fabric, and I love the stuff.  It might be available online, I haven’t looked, but a search on the brand name would probably find it. The SCA and historical living history groups use it for ‘armor’.  I don’t know what the thickness is, it does come in several thicknesses, just ask for one that can be cut with a standard scissors and the seller should know what you’re talking about.  I store mine behind the bookcase and just pull the end out when I need to cut more. It’s out of the way and always where I can get to it.

The eyes are 18mm, I used yellow for the brightness, but CR Crafts online website carries some fantastic metallic gold and bright green eyes too. I highly recommend them!  All are the safety lock style, with the white plastic backing rings that snap up the shank to keep them locked in place.  A bag of 50 is $12, so that’s just under 50 cents a pair, the same price I’d be paying at the craft store IF they could keep their safety lock eyes in stock (which they haven’t been able to reliably do for the past year).  I end up buying mine online now, and CR Crafts does ship fast, I get my orders usually within 5 days.

Snowy owls are large birds in real life but I make my birds so they can be carried on the hand.  While I’ve done brown owls, the white ones have been the best sellers so I stick with these.

The Steampunk accessories on him are made with a brown fake leather that I cut into strips, and the attachments were done with more of the same strips.  I don’t know what the fabric is called, but it does not unravel, I can cut it with a scissors and treat it like leather.  Each owl gets a small glass vial (10 cents from American Science And Surplus) and two or three ‘tabs’ for harness attachments, and I fancied some up with tiny metallic or gold glass beads. The tabs are the metal pop tops off of cat food cans.  I do have some larger pop tops from soup cans, but the cat food can types are the most common ones I have in my storage bucket so I used those for consistency. 

I made up a dozen and was very happy with how they all turned out.