Stitching and painting

I have been lazy again! I haven't updated my blog for weeks again. I have done some stitching, but not that much as I re-discovered my love for painting again! I used to draw and paint a lot when I was younger but not for years. Last time I was painting must have been 2004 or 2005. I haven't been drawing much either, little something every now and then.

I accidentally started painting again as I was bored and didn't feel like stitching so I remembered these ATC cards that I made back in 2007/8. So I took my papercraft supplies and made few cards and I did enjoy it. I also found a forum (atcsforall.com) where you can trade your finished pieces. Soon I noticed that lots of people draw/paint their cards and seem to prefer those, too. I was first a bit scared as I wasn't sure if I still know what to do! But I decided to give it a go.

First I used some old watercolours that I found from my craft closet. I painted few animals and one of them got traded within minutes! I got some selfesteem boost from that and went to basement to get my better paints and stuff. Oh, how I missed my paints! :D I have even started buying new stuff too. Pencils by Derwent. I really love their inktense pencils!

If someone is a part of that forum, you can find me there, using the same nickname there, Hely :) Well, here's a link to my gallery. Keep in mind that I am still learning! I am nowhere near perfect or a good painter :)

I have been doing some stitching too. Here's my update on the mermaids.

I haven't been stitching this piece for weeks now as I didn't have a good green for the plants around the mermaids. I have now ordered one and hopefully it will be a good one.

I also got an awesome birthday gift from my fiancé! He bought me a gift voucher to Sew and so! Ooooh happy day! Here's what I bought..

There's a bear kit by RTO, Meerkats (<3) by Heritage and Cupcakes by Bothy Threads. All of those are full kits. Two charts from LHN and big piece of white Jazlyn (28ct) and white and black DMC as those two colours are always missing! yay! Ofcourse I have already started something, hehe..

Here's my start on the Celebration Cupakes. The fabric on the kit was 14ct white aida but as I really, really don't like white aida, I changed it to white Jobelan (28ct) instead.

This is really fun to stitch! :)

He also brought me some stitching magazines that I have asked him to get for me as I can't get them from where I live.

So many nice charts that I wanna start right now! One of my favourites is Jayne Netley Mayhew's wolves of Cross Stitch Collection. I also plan to stitch Joan Elliott's Victorian Lady soon. Soonish..

Now I will make myself a cup of tea and strat reading other people's blogs! I haven't been reading them for ages.. :( Gonna catch up a little now, hopefully!

Back again!

First I am so sorry I haven't said a word for ages! That doesn't mean I haven't been stitching though. So this time I do hav few pictures to show you :)

First my "wild animals" round robin. You have already seen it, but without my own part. It is done now. It was actually my first finish of 2013! I chose to stitch a bear. For some reason I love bears now. When I waas younger I was scraed of them! I was always afraid they would attack and kill us all. Why? Well.. my favourite cartoons as a kid were about wild dogs who fought against bears which were real killing machines. I know, sounds stupid, but hey, I was a kid :) And those were good! Maybe not anymore.. but I loved them.

So here's my bear :)

Here's also the whole round robin with my bear.

I was a bit afraid it would be too dark for it as the other animals are not that dark coloured. But I think it is fine. Me likes :)

Next is a birthday gift that I stitcher for another stitcher. On this picture the band is not attached to the towel yet. Forgot to take a picture when it was finished..

I also stitched Pollyanna Pickering's Zebra a bit. I added some more black on it. What bothers me is the fabric, 14ct white aida. Not really huge fan of it..

Here's before and after pics.

I do wanna finish this one day ofcourse, even though I don't like the fabric.

I also managed to put few stitches on the "Joy-ornament" by Dimensions. I didn't find the picture of it though. Maybe I didn't take one. I am still not sure what's wrong with it. As earlier I said it looks a bit messy cause the cross stitches and half stitches are going different directions. I mean the top stitches. On my cross stitches the top stitch goes like this \\\\\ and on my half stitches it goes /////. However, on "Southwest Mesa" I have the half stitches exactly the same way as on the ornament, but there it doesn't look bad at all. So, the problem may be on the fabric/floss. The fabric is 18ct aida and I stitch with two threads as was told in the chart. It looks a bit.. bulky to me. Not sure what I will do, if I just keep stitching or what.. Time will tell :)

Then.. ta daa! More finishes!! Whoooo!!!!

Here's my Joan Elliott's Witch that I started on January 2012 during the CrazyJanuaryChallenge. It's finished, finally, lol! The fabric is actually orange. The picture just doesn't look right and I didn't manage to capture the real colour. It's 28ct linen by Silkweaver, called "Inferno".

I left out some backstitches (swirls and border) that I didn't really like. Eyes are all french knots but I tried to do french knots on the dress too. Oh, what a disaster! They were all different sizes and it just looked really bad.. After I was whining about it on a Facebook group, I was told to try a colonial knot. I tried and I fell in love :) Those are so, so much easier than french knots and I managed to make them all same size too, whooo!! :)

There's another finish coming! It's Lizzie Kate's "Snowman '10" which was also started during the CJC. I think.. It was my laptop project but I noticed it wasn't really getting any stitching time, I decided to stitch it and finish it, asap.

I stitched it using DMC. The fabric is.. not quite sure, I once bought it from a real shop. Its 14ct aida by Zweigarth, that I do know. It is marbled, brown. Buttons (which are soooo cute!!) are by Papermania :)

Ofcourse now that I have finished sooo much ;) I had to make new starts, too!

First start of the year was a Quaker. I bought the pattern from a stitchy friend. I LOVE it. The fabric is Silkweaver's 28ct Lugana "Goldspinner". Here's a pic of the patterna and the fabric and how far (not far) I am at the moment.

The first picture of the fabric is quite accurate. I LOVE the colour. And this is fun to stitch too, but sadly, not getting that much stitching time at the moment :(

Here's another start! I started this yesterday as I got the fabric (Silkweaver's 28ct Jazlyn "Seaside melody") earlier this week and it was calling for a mermaid! I was first planning to stitch a Mirabilia mermaid on it, but I did some research and lots of them have tons of bling bling which makes them pretty expensive. So I skipped them.. Maybe later :) But I realised I do have another mermaid pattern and it's perfect! Here's my "Mermaids" by Country Cottage Needleworks :)

Oh how I love it! And the fabric too. It's Jazlyn and even though it is not my first Jazlyn-piece it is my first time stitching on it. Ohhh, soo sooo soft! I seriously love stitching on it. Might be my new favourite. Plus the colour is nice too. I stitched one of the mermaids yesterday and I plan to stitch another one today. I am not using the colours given on the charts as I don't have them. For the mermaid's tails, the ones that change colours. Instead I am using my DMC variegated thread that I bought years ago and never used them. Found some pretty nice colours :) Here's also a pic how the final result will look.

Isn't that lovely??? :)

Lots of stitching and I do love it. I didn't stitch as much as I wanted last year because of my backproblems. I hope they are gone now and I can really enjoy stitching again :)

Have a lovely Sunday everyone, all the mums in UK: Happy Mother's Day! :)

*hugs*

I'm still here! :)

I am still here and stitching! :) I haven't blogged for a while though, mostly cause I have been busy elsewhere and I think I also didn't have much to blog about until now.

I have couple finishes! Yay for that :)

This one is my part of the RR which's theme was "Newton's Law". I do like NL however this one cause me lots of headache lol. I wasn't happy with the colours as I don't have Anchor but DMC so I had to use DMC and it's really not the same using those.. So I changed the colours and started stitching. Didn't look too good. So I frogged it all. I tried other colours.. I wasn't happy again, so more frogging. Finally I decided to use the DMC colours given on the chart. It looks ok,but I am not completely happy with it. The two browns used on the teddy are too close to each other. Both colours are also a bit too close to the colour of the fabric. Also cause I was already annoyed cause of the problems with the colours, the backstitching caused more headache :P I usually like backstitching a lot, but here the stitches go through the cross stitches, are only half a stitch long etc. Pain, at least now. But I was able to finish it and it looks ok :)

Next one is teacups (RR) and I am really enjoying stitching it.

I also participated an exchange. It was Halloween themed. Even though we Finns really don't celebrate Halloween, I still kinda like all those nice patterns with pumkins and stuff. Also as my fiancé is English, and English do have such a thing as Halloween, there's now a very good reason for me to start stitching those nice patterns! ;)

Here's what I stitched for my partner.

I really love this! I must stitch for myself as well. The pattern is from a magazine (World of Cross Stitching) and it's by Joan Elliott. I love her designs, eps smaller ones, not huge fan of the fairies and such.

I have been stitching a bit of my "laptop"-project too. I have this next to my laptop, so whenever I am having a boring moment on WoW, I can stitch this. As you can see, not many boring moments so far..

I have been able to put few stitches on my UFO too. I joined a group on Facebook, which is dedicated to UFO's. The stitching day is every Wednesday.

Finally, a pic of my shopping! I bought two kits from Dimensions. I love them both and I wish to have them finished before Christmas! Good luck to me :P Both kits have a word "Joy" and I have a thing for kits/patterns which include that word ;)

So as mentioned earlier, at the moment I am stitching a teacup for the next round robin piece. After that it's cows and that will be the last piece! I should get my wild animals home at the end of the month :)

Have a lovely November everyone and hopefully, I will blog again soon :)

the Witch

I have made some progress on the Witch again. It feels so great to stitch again! I am really enjoying stitching her. I love the bright colours and the fabric is awesome too. After finishing this I would love to stitch another JE design, but I am not allowed to start anything before finishing those four CJC projects. Oh well, I will live :)

I have done something, whooo!!

Hellloooo!

I've been bad and I haven't updated my blog for ages now.

My fiance was here and I also had a cold! Ugh.. I actually still have it, but getting better. Nose is not running 24/7 anymore, thank God!

Here's a picture of my part of Kaisa's Kitchen RR (round robin). I loved the colours on this one so that's why I chose this pattern.

Next theme is birds and I have already started stitching it. No pics of it yet though :)

I've also stitched my little Witch a bit. I hope to finish it soon as well.

My back is a lot better now, yay!! It's not 100% yet but getting there, soon I hope :) I hope everyone is doing well and you've been stitching a lot! I'll continue stitching the Witch today while watching tv. After my evening walk :)

Oriental cranes

After I received my fabric from Polstitches I got the urge to start something new. I really love the fabric as it's so soft! Colours are lovely too. So I decided to go through my stitching magazines to find something nice for "Heavens above" or "Rain forest". After a while I found a chart by Joan Elliott which I have been wanting to stitch for years now. And "Heavens above" is just PERFECT for that pattern. yay!

So I started to stitch "Oriental cranes" by Joan Elliott last week. Its from Cross Stitcher (UK) and issue is.. 178. I haven't stitched that much as A) I am a slow stitcher and B) the day after I started it I had to go away for a weekend. Went to see my friends whom I haven't seen for months so it was worth it. I had such a great time with them, as always :)

I read from the magazine that two cranes represent long marriage. Ah, how I loved that as.. *drums* I got engaged earlier this month!! How exciting! <3 So this one is gonna be perfect! :)

I started by stitching the bamboo frames first. I really enjoy stitching this as the fabric is so, so soft! I can't believe how nice it is to stitch. I will definately buy from Polstitches again, this IS my favourite fabric.

Last week I got a new neighbour too! On a tree right next to my window, there's a small birdhouse and I saw a little blue tit flying there few times, carrying some nest mats. I haven't seen her now but I hope she is inside the nest now ^^

Witchy progress

I've finally done some stitchin after weeeeeeks break! Yay! :) Not much though but at least little something. I stitched Joan Elliott's Witch which I started to stitch during CJC on January.


Yesterday I also received my two fabric from Sparklies. Here's a picture of them. They look a litte darker in the picture than what they are in real. Yet, I like them both a lot. The green one is 9x13 and the flesh colour is 18x27. I'm gonna stitch a Joan Elliott's "may all your weeds be wildflowers" on the green one.

Pictures, something to show to you :)

I still haven't stitched anything really. I've been watching Roswell again after many years. I used to watch that when I was a teen. I have them now on DVD and decided to watch them again.

But here's some pics for you. New, old, WIPS, UFOs..

This one is Nora Corbett's Poppy pixie. I didn't even remember starting it! *embarassed* So now that I found her again, I need to continue stitching even though not sure if I like the fabric or not.


Second picture is my CJC-project. I am not sure if I posted this picture already or not, I think I didn't. It's Joan Elliott's Witch. My progress so far.


I started to stitch this flower aaaages ago or at least it feels like that. It's a sweetpea by Ellen Mauer-Stroh and I'm using hand dyed aida (14ct) by Sugar Maple Fabrics. Can't remember the colour, but I'm sure I have it somewhere.. will let you know later! I haven't finished it yet, but it's not really missing much lol. I planned to stitch 4 flowers (there's 12 in total) on a same piece of fabric and I'd make it into a pillow. One day..


Hopefully I can update some of my WIPs soon :)

Day 4 - Trick or treat

Yesterday I had problems at choosing what to stitch. I spent at least couple hours just trying to choose my next one! Ofc the funny thing is that it's only a start and I'm gonna start them all sooner or later.. so no idea why it was so hard yesterday. I kinda wanted to start another one (Winter wonderland) but wasn't sure about the fabric after all. It might be a bit too dark, don't know.

Well, finally I was able to make a decision. I decided to start stitching Joan Elliott's "Trick or treat" from "Quick and easy stitch and craft" (issue 157). I had chosen a fabric for it (handyed 14ct aida) but I started to wonder if I should choose a similar colour fabric which is linen. You see, I don't stitch on linen a lot nor evenweave. I have tried them both but stitching on them is a lot slower so I prefer aida. Making that decision took a while, too. I finally decided to try linen as the pattern is quite small so better start with it than with something bigger (then again I do have a bigger one on my list and I planned to stitch that on linen as well). So my fabric is Silkweaver's 28ct Cashel Linen "Inferno".

Stitching on linen.. was damn nice! It IS slower than on aida but the fabric is so nice and soft! Plus I like the colour of the fabric. However I need to unpick some stitching, the orange ones. I started to stitch with orange and I was afraid to pull the thread tight cause didn't wanna cause huge holes on the fabric. So ofc the stitches are now too loose and they look really bad. Oh well, at least it's not much I need to unpick.

I even started to wonder if I should change some fabric choices now. From aida to linen/evenweave. Hehe, we will see. I still do like aida too ofc.

Here's the pic of the witch.




Eilen oli kamalan vaikeaa päättää mitä pistellä seuraavaksi. Meni ainakin pari tuntia pähkäillessä minkä työn aloitan seuraavana! Hassuinta tietenkin on, että aloitan kaiiki työt ennemmin tai myöhemmin. Halusin oikeastaan aloittaa erään toisen työn (Winter wonderland), mutta en ole lainkaan varma kankaasta. Se saattaa olla hieman liian tumma väriltään. Joten jätin sen työn sivuun ja valitsin toisen.

Vihdoin ja viimein onnistuin valitsemaan seuraavan työn. Päätin aloittaa pistelemään Joan Elliottin "Trick or treat" noitaa. Malli on "Quick and easy stitch and craft"-lehdestä, numerosta 157. Olin jo valinnut kauniin käsinvärjätyn kankaan mallille joka on 14ct aida. Aloin kuitenkin miettiä, joskos pitäisikin valita samanvärinen kangas, joka on kuitenkin pellavaa. Minä en pistele pellavalle juuri laisinkaan, sillä sille pistely on todella hidasta. En ole tottunut siihen. Joten pistelen mielummin aidalle. Tämänkin päätöksen tekeminen otti aikansa.. Päätin kuitenkin kokeilla pellavaa, koska työ on melko pieni, joten helpompaa aloittaa pellavalle pistely pienen mallin kanssa (toisaalta, minulla on listassa isompi malli, jonka olen suunnitellu pistelevöni pellavalle..). Kankaaksi siis valikoitui lopulta Silkweaverin 28ct Cashel Linen "Inferno".

Pellavalle pistely.. on huippua! Pistely ON hitaampaa kuin aidalle, mutta kangas on niin ihanan pehmeää! Väri on kans mieleeni. Minun pitää tosin purkaa muutamia pistoja, kaikki oranssit. En alussa uskaltanut kiristää lankaa tarpeeksi, etten vahingossakaan tee kankaaseen reikiä, koska pistot ovat liian kireällä. Tämän takia tapahtui päinvastainen, eli pistot ovat liian löysällä ja näyttävät kamalilta! Onneksi pistoja ei ole kovinkaan paljoa.

Aloin jopa pohtia valitsemieni kankaiden vaihtoa. Siis aidasta pellavaan/evenweave (onko tälle suomenkielistä nimitystä?). Hehe saapa nähdä. Ja pidän siis aidasta edelleen, vaikkakin pellava tuntuu nyt todella mukavalta pistellä.

Ylhäällä kuva noidasta.