Saturday, April 26, 2014

Xmas Embroidery

No, I haven't finished handing out last year's Xmas presents yet. Don't be crazy. But the ones I have left were purchased, not made, so I am safe! Hooray! Here's what KC/DC received:

This is a quote from Joan Jett embroidered on linen, and all I have done since is whine about it. Linen sure moves around a lot while you work with it, and no mistakes are tolerated. Not sure I'll do that again. I would not have survived Pioneer Times.

I made this for my hairdresser:

I started with "Mid-Century Girls Pattern Set" from Cherry & Cinnamon that I found on etsy, but I needed more heads so I traced some that I found on google. Then my husband sketched a scissor and comb and I added those, and the names. And it's stapled around a bizarre wooden frame that I got at TJ Maxx and from which I removed and promptly destroyed whatever sappy sentiment was originally attached.

Also from Cherry & Cinnamon:

Aren't these great? The whole Firefly set is adorable. I should go back and do the rest.

Who here hasn't seen "The Room"? If you raised your hand, I must insist that you drop whatever you're doing right now and see it immediately. You will thank me. And these will make sense.

Well...you know, sort of:

And I meant to crop those photos square, but time is of the essence!!

If you embroider, you should know about Jenny Hart and Sublime Stitching. I have made many a purchase. Go ahead, check it out. I'll wait.

One of the fine ladies in our craft group did a big supply purge and gave the rest of the group a TON of stuff. Actually mostly just me. I took most of it. So to thank her, I made her a little gift based on a pattern from this Jenny Hart book, "Embroidered Effects":

There's wire edging the banner, the knife hilt, and the point of the blade, and I stapled the whole thing around a teeny canvas panel so she can hang it on the wall.

And THEN, based on THAT pattern, I made Becca a thank you gift for checking up on Beelzebubba while we were out of town:

DAWWWWW!! That's almost as cute as my little Bubbles!! Sweet doodle.

I'm gonna go home right now and kiss him on his scaly little head.

HOLY CRAP, IT'S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR.

I considered waiting two more months to make it official. But the photos were piling up and my phone was getting too heavy to lift, so action had to be taken!

Don't worry, I have been very busy since the Farty Party. Thank you to everyone that came out! Especially because it was SWELTERING.

So...how have you been? Is the family good? Awesome. Well, my boss went AWOL somewhere around September, so my job, which up until then had offered plenty of time to update this page, suddenly Got Real. Goodbye free time, hello boss's job without boss's pay! Hooray!!

But I haven't stopped making Shart (TM my brother, Beef Swellington), so I created a photo album called "Craftenstein Storage" so if I ever managed to get back over here I would know what hadn't been posted yet. Maybe, if I did it right. Here's what's banging around in that album:

Those are Madonna lyrics. I woke up one morning thinking about how dumb Madonna looks in that grill she keeps wearing, and also thinking about clowns. So this series was inevitable. Here's the rest:

It kind of works, right? That's what Beef and I thought, too. These are acrylic paint and Sharpie on letramax board.

I'm gonna put just one more thing in here, because otherwise this post will be ridiculously long. So for the annual Cookie Swap I made "GOOP-Approved Butter Jam Cookies," as if GOOP has ever eaten butter or jam or cookies, but whatever, they are delish. And presentation is everything:

I will never regret buying that laminator. And I made a whole pile of heads, so of course I stuck them in all of my food forever until I ran out.

Pretty sure we had cheese and pita chips that night just for the thrill of sticking GOOP heads into it.

I'm cutting this post off. I have such sights to show you....