owl papercraft (and wee giveaway!)

**I wrote this post (including the disclaimer just below) over a month ago. It's _so_last_season_ now, but I'm going to go ahead and post it anyway, and the Reuben's-birthday-from-afar giveaway is still good, too, even a month late. One week for entries; drawing on the 14th!)**

(Nathan cleaned up our computer last week to help it run faster and accidentally deleted something that makes my photo editing software work. Photos when I figure that out or switch to something else--Picasa?. Decision and work pending; I need my beauty sleep.*) *kind of a joke but we're having family photos tomorrow and I look old just now.

Last week was full of Fall Festival; this week is full of Halloween and another one of those Philadelphia trips (regular follow-up visits for my medical kids). I realized yesterday that my October buffer was OVER and a week from tomorrow is baby boy's second birthday.

We're so excited he made it this far (cancer, begone!). So delighted to have him with us (love child!). His toddler-ness is exhausting me, but I'm living out the cliche and fully panicked that he's growing up and leaving that behind. I'm currently on a mad search for a plain green hoodie, so dropping in on lots of baby boy clothing zones and those infant sleepers and soft little knits are pulling at my heart strings.

We're having a celebratory birthday open house, owl-themed, and today was the papercrafting day. I pretend not to like all the expensive scrapbook-related paper gadgets, but went crazy with Becci's cuttlebug for most of the day

First, owlish invitations: I have a giant roll of brown kraft paper, and trimmed sheets to run through my printer and then crank through the cuttlebug. It was good fun for both Reuben and I.I succumbed to the temptation of the embossing power and made a fat pile of little gift tags for Christmas. They are lovely and it was fun and it took a lot of time. Sorry, birthday party. Sorry, laundry.I was also very excited to carve a little owl stamp. With Marian's guidance, I worked on owl sketches while we waited in various doctor offices on Monday (a Philadelphia follow-up day), and chose the most cheerful one. I've carved a few stamps before (here, and more recently), and while it's not a major talent of mine, it's a satisfying and versatile little project that I recommend. A very pretty tutorial here.

sketches
transferring the design (place a pencil drawing face down on the eraser block surface and pencil-rub the back)
carve, then...
sample stamping!
mounted on disk (the reverse, stamped size is SO CUTE, but unphotographed. Too bad for you). These little owl thank you notes will be in 3x4" bags, ready to hold our party craft: acorn owls, of course!. I wrote a little "thank you!" inside in brown ink to match the owl, with a block R in his favorite green on the back. I designed them so they work as thanks-for-coming notes from us, but can still later be re-used/personalized/passed on by the recipient.Happy birthday to Reuben! As a celebratory gesture, I'd like to give away a wee owl set:
* 6 wee owl thank you notes
* 2 wee wooden disks, stamped in brown ink with my cheery owl
* 1 acorn owl

It's kind of awesome.

Comment below with a why-Reuben-is-amazing sort of sentence or two and I'll randomly choose a winner. If I don't already have it, leave me an e-mail address so I can contact the winner.

inspiration: get your crafty acorn ON!

Much inspired by my acorn owls, I continued the crafty acorn love throughout last week. First, with my girlfriends: very much enjoying ourselves with lots of wee bits (we're making playset gifty boxes for our children for Christmas which they could not possibly love as much as we do).

Be stillyourbeatingheart.
(Okay, so that last one was the day before: Reuben tracing his hand. With a green crayon, of course. I don't know where he learned that, but it was very delicious. And I needed one more picture and the other one I took of Shannon's fuzzy-horned owls was quite blurry because I am a most excellent photographer.)

Plus, we had the good fortune to be crafting at the farmhouse. The beauty! And the details like the vine-y fence. They're all over the place. You'd die of joy there.I also set some of my small girl friends plan loose with acorns, wool felt scraps (using that bag of tinies!), and gold leaf. I was impressed and do wish I had a darker background for that turkey because SURELY you want to make one.

sometimes

Motherhood (wifehood, PTO-coordinatorhood, etc):
giving it your all in order to win an unpopularity contest.

Some days are awesome that way.

What to do with an acorn? Owls!

How could this have taken me so long?

Woodland animals and acorns are my two best crafting passions, so it really is amazing that I haven't whipped these little babies up sooner. I found a nice little owl border among the embossing plates while investigating a friend's cuttlebug last week, and was inspired to make Reuben's pending 2nd birthday celebration owl-themed ("Whoo? Whoo is turning 2? Our little Wilde Reu, that's whoo!" See? Irresistible!). Last year, I offered handsewing of hippos for a craft, and it was, ahem, a bit beyond the scope, so I wanted something easy. Bowls of shiny acorns and snippets of wool felt all ready for the gluing will fit this autumn's bill.

They're terrible choking hazards for 2 year olds, but their parents and older siblings are still the ones who like a party. Supervised, Reuben is actually rather mad for these sweeties (unsupervised, he pulls all the parts off).

his first delighted peek

the next day, after he lost the first one in the grass & I had a new bundle of them to share
this morning, busying self while I worked