DIY Painted Owl Pillow Cover

I have some serious love for my Silhouette right now. I mean what's not to love about this adorable pillow cover.  I came up with the saying and immediately knew I had to find the perfect owl for it..would you believe the owl is actually part of a dingbat font and it's not an image graphic?

You do know my trick about using dingbat fonts instead of buying designs from the online store, right? Yeah, you're gonna wanna check this out first (it will change your life) then we can talk about the 'Owl Always Love Whooo' Pillow.  Go on...I'll wait here.

Alright, you good? You ready to knock this out?  Of course you could put this on a piece of wood for a sign or just on a piece of burlap or other fabric and frame it. I went for a pillow cover, because that's just what I do.  I do I do.... If you wanna make yours on a DIY pillow cover, you can read a tutorial on how to make a envelope-style pillow cover on our sister site Two It Yourself. 

Now back to Owl business. The owl design was part of the Chouette alors font set found on DaFont.com.  To be exact it was the capital "A".  I put the owl on a page by itself so I could size it very large - 632 font size, actually.

You can see the design has some very thin lines especially around the ears and eyes.  In hindsight I should have deconstructed the image slightly so the cuts weren't so thin and it was easier to work with.  This is possible by highlighting the entire owl design > right click > select ungroup.  You can see from this screen shot I removed the double circle around the eyes and ears and made the wings smaller and the outline larger.  The design remains the same, but it's just adjusted to make the stencil a little more stable and easier to work with.

Once I was happy with it, I sent it to the Silhouette to cut a freezer paper stencil.  My blade was on a 2.

After I had the owl cut, I opened a new work area, flipped the canvas to a landscape layout, and added the text.

 Always - Font: Great Vibes, Size 282
 Love - Font: Haettenschweiller, Size 263 (font stretched slightly)
 Whooo - Font: Times New Roman, Size 224

I cut this stencil on freezer paper too.  Since it took me forever to decide on if I should go with 'you' or 'whooo' and then how to spell the sound the owl makes... I painted Always Love first,  then the owl and lastly 'whoooo'.  Between each group I let the paint dry completely before adding the next freezer paper stencil to the burlap pillow cover.

And here's how she turned out.  I think my painted owl pillow is a hoot...sorry, sometimes I just can't help myself.

Other Helpful Tutorials to complete this project: 

How to make a burlap envelope-style pillow cover

How & Why to Make a Freezer Paper Stencil

Using Dingbat Fonts as FREE Silhouette Designs

Thanks for coming to class today at Silhouette School.  If you like what you see, I'd love for you to pin it!