Good times!

I would like to wish everyone a good and happy new year!
I think that over all my year was good.
The only complaint is that I didn't do enough stitching! >.<
:)

Felt gifts

I said that I would post photos of the ornaments that I was making for my nieces and nephews.

They are felt and all hand stitched.

I was flipping through a Crate and Barrel catalog and saw these cute little felt ornaments and choked when I saw how much they costed. $40! For a set of four. WTF?!?
I thought to myself that I could easily make those myself.

They cost me under $2 bucks to make. Felt is cheap people!



One the last one I tried a herringbone stitch on it and it was very hard to stay straight, as you can see. But I MASTERED THE FRENCH KNOT BABY!!!!!!!! I feel so dumb that all this time I couldn't do one to save my life.



I just hope that they will like them.

Snip Snip!

Last year for christmas my sister got me a cute cellphone charm for Chinatown in Chicago. Unfortunately a charm is not the world's best thing for my phone. I have a BlackJack. I don't want to scratch the screen.
But I just had to use it, it's too cute to not.
So I noticed that my folding scissors had a spot for something like that. Now I rarely lose my scissors! She's decked out in a cute little kimono, parasol, and two little swords!

Dreaming of summer already

Sorry for the lack of posts. I really want to post at least once a week, but I have been sick lately and haven't really done anything. I've been playing World of Warcraft with the boy mostly. But I have been stitching in between places (if you know the game, there are periods of time spent in flight to get to the next area). So not all of my time is playing around. So moving on!

The color is a little washed out, and I don't have the time to take better photos. :( But they are quite vibrant.


Pansies

I had forgotten all about these projects that I have done a while ago, oh say like 4 years ago.
They came from a British x cross magazine, Cross Stitch Crazy July 2004. I like the British magazines better because they have more whimsical projects and a lot of little fun designs. The only down side is that they are expensive.


Geraniums


Petunias

They are all stitched on 14 ct. aida. I added little 3D objects to them for something a little different.

Bear + pegasus= pegibear!

This cutey was a freebie from Vermillion Stitchery , a few years ago actually. Sadly you can't download it anymore. It was a part of a calender series. I only downloaded the ones that I wanted. The site does have many freebies, so I check back every once and a while.
There is one thing that I hate about cross stitching and that is METALLIC THREAD!!! It is demon spawn! And this puppy called for gold AND silver!!! Actually I tend to stay away from projects that call for it. But in the end this little bear turned out so cute!!
He's stitched on 14ct. aida and he fits perfectly in a 4x6 frame. He currently sits on my sewing table.
The other charts from that series that I grabbed were a bear dragon, bear unicorn, and Bucchus the wine bear. And now as I'm typing this, damn I should have downloaded them all!

Video games try to rot your brain, try

Sorry for the period of nonpostiness. I will admit what I haven't posted in a while though. For the past several months I have been playing a video game with the boy. Over the past month I have been glued to it, in preperation for today. Yes, I play World Of Warcraft (the expansion comes out today). I'm not ashamed, I play with my husband so we still spend time together, and it has saved us butt loads of money. We haven't been going out to stores and spending money on crap that they really don't need. I've been ok with this. I talk to my friend every night through the game, she lives in Canada. So I'm really doing two things at once.
I've been working on some Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews, so not all of my time is spent on the compy. When I finish I'll post picys. And there is a little bit of a back story but I will explain when I post the photos.

Now I do have stuff to talk about cross stitch wise.
I don't normal post WIPs but this is my BAP! I started it in November of last year and it's been taking me a while to work on, a. it's big and b. I want to do small projects to put off my boredom with my BAP.

So anyway, on to my big ass project!

Geisha
I got this Janlynn chart at Wal-Mart before they became one large butt and stop carrying cross stitch supplies. It's just a chart so I bought everything else separately.
The finished product is 8"x15.5". This will be the biggest project that I have ever done. But I WILL finish it damnit!


This is my work "mess". It takes two floss cards and a lot of fabric. I'm using 22 ct. light blue Aida. I'm a hoop user, they work just fine for my, I normally wash my completed project and iron them so I get the hoop marks out. I don't use the wooden ones, they don't hold tension like the tension plastic metal ones (I'm not sure what their proper name is). And yes I have a charm (Hello Kitty in a kimono) on the end of my scissors so I can find them. :)


This is what I have done so far. It doesn't look like much but it is!
One of these years (haha) I'll finish it.
But I'm also working on another Geisha kit.
And as you can guess now, I LOVE Japanese culture!
You should see my living room, lucky bamboo to samurai swords!

Vintage Books!!

I have been busy over the past few days. Getting ready for my favorite holiday!
I actually started stitching again. I needed my little break.
But I was going through some of my things and I found some books that my mother bought for my over the years. She supports my craftiness and buys me stuff like this all the time. I thought that I should share.
These are fours books in a series from Better Homes and Gardens

They are titled:

Sewing Casual Clothes
Tailoring Suits and Coats
Pattern Adjustments
Professional Sewing tips
They are from 1966! They are in very good condition too.



This one is called:
Complete Guide to Needlework
It's from Readers Digest and is from 1979
The colors that they used in it are nasty 70's colors of yellows, browns and blues. But it's a very good resource book.

Yay for books older then me!

This sucks

I'm actually burnt out on stitching at the moment. It's soooo frustrating! I have loads of time to spend working on something but I rather read that then stitch. And the terrible part is that I DON'T have anything to read!!!! So I'm taking a couple of days off of stitching and see what that does. I don't want to force myself to do something and end up hating it later.

Just so this post isn't completely boring, I'll add a fun photo!



This shows that I don't stitch all the time. Can you tell that I love coffee, I don't know, geez, maybe...

More of Teresa Wentzler freebies

I've done more Teresa Wentzler's freebie designs. I've posted about "Stretch" before, so here is the other that I have completed.

'Tempest in a Teacup" is my favorite by far. I just love the expression on his face. Talk about one unamused little dragon. :)

He's stitched on 14 ct. aida. Wow, I guess my fabric of choice is aida, very simple.

This morning I downloaded another little dragon of hers, called "Futurecast"
It's cute, I can't wait to start it. Unfortunately I have a verrrry long list of charts that I want to do before it.

"Stretch" Bookmark

I have seen so many people stitch this design. It is a beautiful design that TWDesignsworks had up for a freebie a long time ago, sadly it's no longer up. :(
She has a lot of beautiful pieces that I want. I love how she mixes two different colored strands to get rich detail.

I made mine into a bookmark, a rather large and bulky bookmark. But I love it anyway. I used powdered blue 14 count aida (hence the bulkiness of it) and used dark purple felt for backing. I remember starting this and then putting it down for 4 years and then picking it back up again. Again, I'm really bad at that. This was early on in my X stitching venture so I got annoyed with it because it was a more difficult piece that I have done.

Surveying the stash!

I was "cleaning" out my containers of craft stuff, and by cleaning I mean making a big ol' mess. But I had fun doing it! I keep all my crafting stuff seperate from my cross stitch things. I guess I'm a snob about keeping it all nice and neat in one spot, as to where the rest are kinda throw into draws and what not.
So I will start off this post with an introduction of my work space. It is in the spare room along with all of the boys music/art/computer stuff. We call it our studio.
The table was made by my father, it folds up and portable. I love it. The black storage container is the home of all of my cross stitch stuff, well what I could fit that is. The white one is the home of all of my other crafty projects that i do. In the closet I have all of my misc. craft books and finished craft projects that I have up for sale on my shop. I try very hard to keep it clean.


And now on to the stash!!


This is all of my embroidery thread. I will NEVER wind thread on itty bitty bobbins AGAIN!! It took for-freaking-ever!



A lot (I'm afraid to count it) of my cross stitch floss, I use only DMC. The plastic bags system works just fine for me. A little while ago I printed out a DMC Shopper's list, that has all of their thread (numbers), it helps out big time, I know what I have without going through all my bags.


A crap load of my books and charts


That's a lot of hoops! And loads of fabric!!
A lot of this stuff was given to me by a friend that I use to work with. She just gave to me, I was more then happy to accept it!

I also have a lot of magazines, but i found that the British ones have more cute and whimsical charts in them, so I have a lot of those, but they are a little pricy. Ya know, being from over seas and all :)

Good Thusday Morning!!!

I saw that someone had posted this link in one of the cross stitch communities on Live Journal.
I think it is a very good idea!

Operation Support Our Troops

Every sewers bane!

If you do any type of sewing, you will completely understand this one! lol
I got this freebie chart from the Janlynn website. It's stitched on 22 count aida and with DMC floss. I worked out the time it took me to do, it was about 4 hours. But it felt like longer because of the long breaks that I took from it. :) I know, I'm bad.
It turned out pretty small I might make it into a mini pillow, the kind that you hang on a door knob. Then I'll hang it in my studio (can't call it a craft room because I share it with my hubby's art and music stuff). I found one of the keys in the legend to be confussing. But I figured something out for it and it didn't look wrong at all.

Coolest pillow I own

I love Hello Kitty. I love her so much that I have a Hello Kitty waffle maker. It kicks major butt! Someone had put together a Sanrio craft site a a while ago and I stumbled on to it and squeed, yes I actually squeed out loud. I listed the link for all to see the awesomeness. I have been a HK fan since I was really little, face it that cat's old! I saw this design and just had to do it. It took me a while to do it (like all of my other projects). It was soooo simple though.
And NO BACKSTITCHING!!! YAY!
This is my first project that I made into a pillow and I loved how it turned out. And I will be making a lot more pillows in the future.
The pillow actually doesn't look lopsided in right life, the camera is trying to make me look bad. O.0

My first design!

At the begining of the year I switched jobs via a friend that bugged her supervisor that they needed a new cake decorator. After a long fight (with my superviors at the time) I got the job! It meant a lot to me that my friend went out of her way to help me out. I thought I should make her something. She is a very unqiue indivdual. I have been wanting to make my our cross stitch design for a while so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity.
"You're one of a kind" fits her to a T! It was very simple and easy to draw up (yay for graph paper!) For the life of me I can not find the stinkin' paper that I drew this on. I'm sad. :(
I used 22 count green aida cloth and learned a lesson. It's small! I should have used a larger count but, oh well! I do learn from my mistakes though. I mixed two different colors of thread and added a few little star busts so it didn't like too plain. I also made a boarder out of some ribbon that I had laying around. The photo was taken right before it was framed. And I don't have a clearer photo :( sorry. Framed it's about 4X6 in.
I'm very happy with how it can out.

When kits go wrong

A couple of years ago I purchased a kit of Good Luck Bear (Care Bears). I LOVED the Care Bears when I was young and I still have my Love a-lot Bear plushie. I started to sort everything out in the kit and noticed that this kit sucked. The colors were off. The instruction said how many of each color and I counted and there was one color that wasn't even listed. The green for the body was not all the same shade, I counted three times to make sure that I wasn't making a mistake, it said 25 strands of medium green and with the two odd shades there was 25 strands. I only used the colors it came with because I hate to be wasteful. In the picture you can see the different shades. I'm going to be very picky next time I want to buy a kit. But it's cute anyway. It has been a while since I have done this kit, and I believe that I actually tossed the chart, it was MCG Textiles I think. And I have heard from others that some of their kits have been like that too.
But at lest it's still cute!

More little things

I did this one a long time ago. It was sitting the a $.50 bin at Wal-Mart. I couldn't pass it up.
It was before I started stitching the same direction. >_<
And those dreaded french knots look terrible but, oh well. I think that I have improved greatly in my technique. This was a little side project that took with me on vacation a few years back, so it took a while to finish since it wasn't first priority.
It hangs in my kitchen now. :)

The little things

I love to cook, so much that I have a degree in it. So when I saw this itty bitty one and had to do it! I think that I will put it on my little recipe notebook.

Recent Finish

A couple of months ago I finished a big project. But it was easy, so easy in fact that I had to put it down off and on for 4 months (staring at the same color, it messed with my eyes). It's all in one color and it's a decent size. I just need to frame it. That's one thing that I'm not good at it frame my projects. A. customs frames, B. expensive. So I try to make my things into pillows or wall hangings and things along those lines.

It is a free design that I got off the internet. It was so pretty that I could not pass up. And I LOVE faeries.
Passione Ricamo has some very beautiful charts and freebies. I plan on stitching more of this artists charts.

Progress over the years

My mom first showed me a needle and thread when I was about the age of 12. For years before, I watch my mom sew clothes for us kids and relax cross stitching. She did some very beautiful work. She kinda stopped after awhile, I'm not sure why but she has her reasons I suppose. But she ended up giving my sister a good chunk of her sewing stuff, and me all of her cross stitch things.
When she taught me x stitch in the beginning, she handed me a kit and I when to town on it... for about two days and then I lost ALL interest in it. I ended up putting it away with keepsakes and such. When I was about 21, I was moving out of my parents house and found it while I was putting things away in my new home. I had done about thirteen rows. Sad, I know. I decided to finish it, 9 years later!
As you can see in the photo that balloons look really crappy. But as finished it I understood that I had to be patience and not to pull so damn hard! I never framed it because after all these years the fabric yellowed and stained. But I keep it with the rest of my cross stitch things.
But over the years I have improved greatly.

Updates and such

In the next few days I wish to put up some links and odds and ends. My day job sucks up most of my time, so I will try to get more stuff up here shortly.
For the time being here is a past project that I've done:

I believe that I did this one in 2002. This photo was taken with my old camera, but I have a better one now, so the photos will look better.

First enrty of many to come!

Hello and welcome to my stitching extravaganza!

Upon hours and time spent on the interwebs searching for fun cross stitch sites (and being disappointed) I just decided to make my own. There are many out there but they seem a little too granny-ish and blah for my tastes. I like fun, whimsical and out of the ordinary. Nothing boring for me!

Lets get acquainted! Here's a little bit about myself:
I have been cross stitching for over 16 years. I also do embroidery, appliqué, and sewing. I also love to make stuffed monsters. In case you are interested, I have an Esty shop full of them.
www.glitterandgloom.etsy.com
So feel free to check it out!
My mom taught me everything I know about the ways of the needle and thread. And I own a lot of her old supplies and books and such too. I have a whole storage container of just cross stitch stuff. Then a different one for all my sewing supplies and on top of that a box full of felt and supplies for my craft shop!
What I love most about my hobby is that it's DIRT CHEAP!

I plan to make this blog a good resource for others for I will have loads of links and photos and tips. I also appreciate comments or questions or just plain chatting. So don't be shy, I don't bite, hard.

Love, Luck and Lollipops!