leibster love xxx

A big thankyou to the utterly ace Flaming Nora for my award. It gives me the warm fuzzies!

The Liebster award comes with some rules.

A Liebster blog award is given to blogs that are gaining popularity but have less than 200 followers. The rules for nominating are:

1. Thank the giver and link back to her/him.

2. Reveal your top picks and leave a comment on their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.

4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love too!

So here are the 5 blogs I feel deserve to get a virtual high five and leibster from yours truly. Please check out and enjoy...

1. http://crystal-fiberartsy.blogspot.com/   A cool embroidery blog- she does such cute work. I really like her needlework style, everything she makes looks superneat.
2. crooked sister this blog is so stylish and there are plenty of cute crafts to see here. 
3. http://jafabrit.blogspot.com/ some amazing embroidery here and her other art is great too. have a look back through her posts to find her doodle cloth, like a sketch book but embroidery, and be inspired
4. http://wrenandstitchy.wordpress.com/ embroidery AND chickens! Seriously, this is a great blog and Glenda's needlework is perfect, she also seems to be one of the nicest people around in the blogosphere  :)
5. http://andstitches.blogspot.com This is a fairly new blog that is going to be huge. It features the work of lots of different embroiderers - great flickr group too!

Wait! Don't forget to give Flaming Nora's blog a visit too while you are at it!

my picks are all embroidery blogs, because i love getting some inspiration from you all. Hope this post might bring you all a few extra visits.

There are tons of other blogs out there that I love - the craft blogging community is awesome - see my blogroll for more of my favourites. And if you can recommend any blogs to me I'd love to hear from you, I'm always on the lookout for new inspiration.

Stitched jewellry

there is some beautiful stitch inspired jewelry around right now, look what I found at JOY

wooden cross stitched earrings- soooo cute!

And look at this necklace from graciesgardenbazaar

it's so beautiful, I wish it was mine. The graded colour and different stitches make it so unique. If you were wearing this you'd want to stroke it constantly! I need this necklace in my life :)

wrestler

This embroidery is based on a vintage photo I found online- I fell in love with his mustache. Although it was good fun to work on I'm not really very happy with the finished piece. I used to like little long and short stitches as a fill stitch but looking at this I'm going off it. I think as it's too stripey, or maybe it just doesn't work so well here as it 'flattens' his torso. Also the colours I chose were too bright, especially his skin. I realized this halfway through but couldn't face unpicking it all so I teastained it at the end, it's better but I'm not thrilled by the end result. Am considering staining it a bit darker still, or I might just put it away for a while and look at it with fresh eyes in a month or so, what do you think?
Another issue is what to do with him, I'd planned to put him in an 8 by 6 oval hoop and hang him with some other hoops I have on display, but I can't find one anywhere-I don't think they actually exist so I might stretch him over a small canvas or put some dowel at the top and bottom to make a sort of wall hanging- but am open to any suggestions.
I think my next project will be a sort of fill stitch sampler- maybe even a tutorial (oooo fancy!) in the meantime I'm testing a really cute pattern for imagine gnats that I can't wait to show you and also stitching up some flash gordon fan art (oooo geeky!)

Oliver Jeffers

My 2 year old boy is a huge fan of Oliver Jeffers kids books, for anyone not familiar with Oliver Jeffers this image is typical of his style - look here . He does the most amazing stuff, I particularly love his lettering.
As Jake is also currently obsessed with space this image from 'How to catch a star' was ideal for his room. I never have much luck transferring images onto dark fabric (this is a quilters cotton) so I redrew the image, this also enabled me to resize the image to fit my hoop. I then stitched in back stitch, split and satin stitch and added some double-x  stars to finish. The star looks more blended and less stripey than it does in the photo- the flash has highlighted where the colour changes.
Jake's verdict? I got a "clever boy mummy" which I think means he likes it- unless he has mastered sarcasm at a very young age!

Oh and while I'm on the subject of Oliver Jeffers, here is a fan who expresses her love for Oliver's illustrations using a different type of needle!
http://youtu.be/sU-JXk3yq48
Cool huh?

'love' Emily Peacock

Emily Peacock did two gorgeous cushion cover designs for CrossStitcher magazine. This is the first one and I'm about to start the second, I'm planning to make them up as they were shown in the magazine with a red polka dot backing and red pompom trim. I really enjoyed stitching this one- no half stitches! 

Emily Peacock has done some really great designs several of which are on my to-do list and I'd really recommend them to others as they are really simple to stitch, there are some lush woolly cross stitch kits on her website that I am in lust with.

torpid with ennui (includes some NSFW language)

this is for a friend, I may add a border or motif... or then again i might not ...

Update 30/01/2012

so I added a border and turned it into a lavender sachet- and made another lavender bag (inspired by Nathan Barley). Both the quotes are sort of in-jokes with my friend and she liked them, I think they turned out pretty cute in the end.

Happy new year

These are some little christmassy things I made. I used a pattern from Crosstitcher for the houses. Everywhere seems very bare now the decorations are down.