Made this for my Sister, we call her Lady Bucket (Bouquet from TV keeping up appearances) cos she is fussy and a bit snobby! She admired the one I made with the Geese on and she likes owls.
It's just recycled stuff that was thrown away by others but treasure to me! The owl part is some old plywood from the sides of a chest of drawers it had some old veneer on but underneath it was good ply so I removed the veneer with a chisel and cleaned it up with a random orbital sander. the backing and surround was an old mahogany door frame that was given to me as firewood! (the frame is actually made of 4 strips glued side by side but as the grain is the same you can't see the join)
I used a grade 5 blade for the main frame with a grade 3 for the leaves. The main part I used blades grade 3 and for the finer detail a grade 1 blade. Approx 6 blades snapped when cutting the detail all of them were FD reverse blades, eventually I switched to the cheaper Niqua plain blades which did not cut so fast but none broke.
I can see now why you use a No1 blade for some of your work, you must have the patience of a saint. Very fine detail and a great credit to the art of scroll sawing.