DIY Christmas Gifts- part 1

Here we go with my DIY Christmas gifts I have been talking about.. My inspiration for these handmade gifts is an obvious one. Alot of you might have seen Sukan's work on Etsy. Well I "super sized" mine. Her pillows run at a smaller size of 12" x 20", mine were 16" x 28". One thing I did was made sure there was a clear difference between the boy and girl owls. She is very consistent with the shapes, every single owl is exactly the same. She just adds different colors and details- Which I learned very quickly how smart it is to be consistent so you can keep using one owl as a template for all the others. Also instead of making the pillow cover myself(which would have beeen easier/cheaper) I found the down cusion and pillow cover at Ikea for $19.99 each(see ektorp cushions here). I ran to Joann's and bought a stack of felt sheets in all different colors. Then I brought them home and layed out the colors on the pillows to decide what color combinations I was going to go with, and for 8 hours split in 2 days I cut and sewed all of the felt on by hand. It would have been way easier to sew them with my sewing machine on upholstery fabric and then make the pillow cases, But I liked the look, feel and colors of the Ikea pillows.
See Sukan's owl designs here. You can see how much money I saved myself too. Her pillow covers run at $52.95-95.00. That is just for the pillow cover, and I made 2 of them for the price of.. I'd say $23.00 each including the pillow. There are definitely cheaper ways to go too. Hopefully that is some DIY crafting inspiration for you!

Happy crafting!