The Angels Have the Phonebox!

Quote from yet another fantastic episode of Doctor Who, Blink.

Next time I decide blackwork looks amazing and I need to have a go, remind me that lots of little lines are annoying, and that performing this act of blackwork embroidery on 28 count evenweave is a bad idea, please :)

But isn't it coool?


I love blackwork embroidery.


And how much does it look like some awesome foreignly written caligraphy from the back?


Still have to iron it and frame it, but Ive spent such a long time working on it, and I'm fairly proud of it, so it just couldn't wait :)

Tinkerbell

Bought this kit a long time ago. Decided it was time to stitch it!


I love this style. I think it is so entirely gorgeous. But, it's so not cross stitch. The whole thing was just back stitching and half stitches. And you had to stitch non-traditionally into the aida cloth. I almost couldn't, my OCD feelings really didn't like not stitching into the holes of the cloth... Having to make new holes in those perfectly aligned squares. Even to make this bit of pretty, I almost couldn't!


But she is finished, and oh so pretty. And sparkly!!




Her wings and the pompoms on her shoes are with awful-to-stitch-but-fantastic-looking metallic thread. Love this effect!!

Post 60.

My 60th post! I'm excited. Even if you aren't.

Today I bring my framed Doctor Who cross stitch from my last entry, and another bear. And a half. One and a half bears.

So, the framed piece:



Was a size 40x50cm frame (as far as I can remember haha) to give you some idea of the scale.
Tried first with a black and then a white border, but it just looked funny. So, I used the inset that came with the frame, backwards, which was just a cardboardy brown and it works so well! I love the colours together! Nice and mute. Sadly, not fantastic in my house because I go for the bright and colourful, so this just gets lost on my walls.. so I was thinking that I might sell it, and make myself another, on black....




Someone at the baby shower loved my first bear so much, they asked if they could buy one! So I made her this pale one, and then found this brilliant grey wool... so started bear 4. And bought some dark brown for bear 5. Haha.

Fire and Ice.

So, I ADORE this graphic.
It's from a brilliant episode of my newest Obsession (a.k.a Doctor Who), and is just a fantastic quote.


(I've tried to find out who made this, but I can't figure it out - if anyone knows, PLEASE TELL ME, I want to give them credit and a huge hug)



In fact, I adored this so much I turned it into a cross stitch pattern, with a few minor adjustments. Like the top of the TARDIS. And fixing the spelling of 'center' to the proper English, seeing as well, I'm Australian, and the show is English.

And then I stitched it.





It's stitched on hand-dyed aida, cos I couldn't find black 18 count ANYWHERE. (this is what happens when you try and dye white 18-count aida with 'Black Velvet' dye. It's a kind of blue grey. Which I actually quite like now. Wasn't sure at the start, but now I am a fan) and I used DMC thread 797. And like 60 metres of it, I guesstimated.


But it also GLOWS! I FOUND A USE FOR MY GLOW IN THE DARK THREAD!






Now to figure out if I can find a frame the right size.

Bragging, and not much else.

Guess who is the first result if you type 'cross stitch portal' into google images?

IT'S ME! 1st and 3rd! OR FIRST AND SECOND WHEN I TRIED AGAIN.




Oh, thats a little tumblr-ish of me haha. (Speaking of which, I'm on tumblr a whoooole lot lately)
But, anyway. That makes me a little happy.. my little claim to fame.

My Portal projects original blog post

I really want to put up all of my cross stitch patterns in an easy place.. but I can't add a page.. I think its broken. I might just upload them as images into a big long blog post and make a permalink or something. Maybe. I'll have to think about it. I should really have my patterns on my own blog. I did go to all that effort to make them.



I've got a MASSIVE cross stitch I'm working on, and I'd love to show you all.. but I want the whole thing to be unveiled at once. I'm thinking in a couple of days maybe.

I was also commissioned to make another of my bears, so I'm making a few of them up to sell too.

But no new pictures today.


ETA: I FOUND HOW TO ADD PAGES. THIS MAKES ME HAPPY. Now to figure out how to successfully add all my patterns to it.


ETA,A: I now have a Patterns Page. There is a link over to the right, right up the top. Only a few cross stitch patterns so far, but I'll add more as I feel like it!

FarmVille Bookmark

Finally finished a bookmark I intended to give as a christmas present!

I got an iPhone 4S! Also nyancat!

If only Siri could know what she's wearing now!

Bought case off eBay for $6, it's essentially 11 count adia, stitched with 3 strands of floss. Would use two strands next time, even if 3 is right for colour coverage, because it made the case buckle a little bit, but it's all good, cos it's only a tiny little bit which I'm sure will fix itself. (or I'll stop noticing it, either way!)

Portal Project is Complete!

I finished my Portal project!!! Actually I finished stitching it last week, it's just taken me forever to frame it because I wanted to mount it properly. Remind me next time I decide to do a huge project how much I hate framing things, yeah?


Took forever, because black, as much as I love blackwork, gets a bit boring after a while! And it's twice the size of the others.





I love making things this size, they can be complex, but still a quick little piece to stitch :)

And just to brag, this whole exercise of taking the photos and writing this post happened solely from my new ipad 2! :D

Portal Project; Parts 2, 3 & 4 of 10

Part one was completed all the way back here:
We Do What We Must Because We Can

Tetris has my heart.

I love the look of black aida, but I didn't really like the finished look with this piece, it just didn't pop properly. Pattern is the same one for my previous tetris heart, which when I'm not half asleep and on my slow computer I might even link to -- but I enlarged each block to be 4 instead of 2, making it bigger.
I outlined everything and put some detail into each block using a shiny white thread, which was an absolute pain to back stitch, let me tell you. Totally best off using a shorter piece of thread than you usually might to stop it getting tangled.



A photo of the white shiny detailing.



And showing off my macro setting on my camera, an obscene close up!

Back to cross stitch!

I felt like cross stitching yesterday, so I made a Kirby :)


I'm making a background, and its awesome but I'm not showing it until its done, and I could postpone this post until it IS done, but I feel like posting now. :P


ETA: Updates! And finishing touches


A pretty white star bg... THAT GLOWS IN THE DARK!


Yes, it's a crappy picture, but its hard to get a good glowing photo at any time let alone in the middle of the day. :)

Tetris Magnets

I should really use my proper camera for these things, shouldn't I? Instead I use my iphone camera, because then I can just upload it straight to photobucket with the photobucket app... but enough on my laziness*; these are my first attempt at making something with plastic canvas! I used the perforated plastic 14 count stuff, cut it into shape first (which I am really bad at when it needs to be a specific size) then stitched. I know I'm missing one of the L shapes, I cut it so stupidly it would have had a section that was only three stitches across! After I wrapped the edges I glued a strip of magnet to the back using PVA to begin with, but yesterday I bought a hot glue gun(!!), so now I'm using that instead. It's much better, and even more fun than PVA.



* So I did take new photos with my camera, and I found the cord and the usb card reader so its just as easy to use the camera now, and they look so much nicer, and will from now on. Mostly. :)

I was so excited to see that I got some spam mail the other day, because it had a HUGE fridge magnet in it, and magnets like that are perfect for chopping up into little crafty pieces. So imagine my excitement when I got another yesterday! Its currently soaking to get rid of the paper.

And because this makes me laugh when I look at it, my whiteboard:

We do what we must, because we can.

Portal project part 1 of 10!

Firefly

Whipped this up while watching Serenity.



Think my next will be "No power in the 'verse can stop me" cos I love that film, and quotes are fun to stitch while my mind is to unsettled to concentrate on more complex things.

Side note, I'm a fan of black aida, and I love the look of the fluro yellow thread on said black aida! I didn't realise the floss was so slippery though, it kept looping, separating and being generally crazy-thread. Doesn't help that my fingertips are as rough as guts currently and would catch on the strands all the time too, damn works cleaning chemicals!

The cake is a lie

I love Portal!




adapted from a pattern on the Sprite Stitch forums, that my iPhone can't be bothered linking to right now, but will when I get on a desktop. I may have used my own cake pattern, but I'm currently not sure which one I used. :)

EDIT: Here is the link I wanted to share, which itself in turn links to the cake pattern we used: spritestitch.com/forum...

Celtic knotty bookmark

A bookmark!


This took me FOREVER, I had real problems keeping track where I was up to in the pattern! But I finished the stitching, so now just to back it. I'm not sold on how to best do this.. In any case I edged it with Fray Stoppa - crappy name, but FANTASTIC glue :)

and because I am quite proud of this work, here's the back :)

Babyish Things Today

A punchneedle Blue! On a foam-like background, and with a magnet attached.

Because I'm pretty proud of my first freestyle punchneedle, here's one on an angle to show the contours:




And an un-ironed cross stitch, of Baby Pluto!:

Snoopy

My Dad is also ridiculously hard to think of gifts for, he tends to already have everything he could possibly need or want!

I figured a Snoopy cross stitch could be a good present, 'cos he collected an impressive amount of Peanuts books during the 70's and even shipped them to Australia with him when he moved from NZ.

CLOSE UP!

Font sampler.

I was playing around with quotes I wanted to cross stitch, and I accidentally made these awesome patterns that didn't fit in a normal sized photo frame, and had heaps of off cut adia in that size that I wanted to use up, so I played around with some fonts, seeing which ones came out well cross stitched.

This got kinda wonky somehow, I was seriosuly careless with my counting. Bad bikyclist.
I love the font used for 'taken' but it uses so many stitches!

Snow Pea

My brother is the hardest person to buy presents for, its just ridiculous. So I gave him an ultimatum: if he didn't come up with a list of potential presents for his birthday, I'd be giving him cross stitch.

He didn't deliver, so I made him this:




We both love Plants v Zombies, so it was fun to make and I knew he'd get a laugh out of it. It now sits above his x-box, for all to see.

This was my first attempt at making up a pattern from scratch, and it came out damn well, if I must say so. Screen cap to photoshop, then painting in each pixel the exact right colour, and then to the KG-Chart LE to make it a 'proper' cross stitch pattern.
Pattern can be found here.