One week in...

After a week's work on my Panda Collage cross stitch it's not looking as different to last week as I'd hoped. I've managed a few hours on it, spread over the week, but the section I'm working on has so many different shades of brown that I feel like I've spent most of my time changing colours.

The most frustrating part has been the confusing nature of some of the symbols on the chart. Some of the symbols are not as they appear in the key, and so I've had to guess which colour they're supposed to represent. Then, to make matters worse, two very similar shades of brown have very similar symbols too! I've lost count of the number of stitches I've had to unpick because I've used the wrong shade - grrrr!

Still, I'm loving how it's looking, with it being such a densely stitched design. It almost ends up like a stitched carpet of colours.

Here's where I'm up to now (excuse the poor lighting)...

I haven't made any progress on my birth sampler this week as I wanted to get a good start on the collage. However, I think next week my stitching time will be more evenly split between the two projects. After all, I only have until New Year to get the birth sampler complete and framed - eek!

A new thread...

...quite literally! I've taken a little break from card making to concentrate on Cross Stitch for a while. I've been dabbling with cross stitch for about 20 years but never managed to finish anything other than tiny projects.

There was one particular project that I bought around 20 years ago that just kept getting put in a bag or drawer for years at a time, then worked on for a week or so before being consigned to the bag again. I dug it out again recently and, spurred on by my 3yr old Daughter, I decided I WOULD finish it this time. It is called 'Fireside Toast' and features the Country Companions animals. I DID finish it and this is what it looks like before framing...

As you can see, where I kept it on the hoop it has marked the fabric but I'm hopeful that I can get a picture mount that will cover those bits.
I also completed a Cherished Teddies kit which was given to me when my Daughter was born. It's called 'Phoebe Bear'...

I've now started two new projects. The first is a birth sampler for my Sister-in-law, who is expecting her first child in December.

This is where I'm up to so far...

The other project is a kit I found on eBay for the silly price of £4.50 including postage. There must be over £20 worth of threads alone! It's called 'Panda Collage' and is part of the DMC Wildlife Collection. I hadn't realised quite how big it was until it arrived and it's huge! Much bigger than anything I've attempted before. When completed it will should look like this...

It took me about 4 hours just to sort all the different shades of floss so I've not had much stitching time yet. However, this is my progress so far...

Not much I know but I'm happy with it as a start. The pale blue stitches are all half crosses which helped speed things along. I'll try to provide weekly updates on my progress.

Some Odd Girl Challenge

Just a quick one to share my entry to the Some Odd Girl sketch challenge this month. My card doesn't strictly follow the sketch but I hope they won't mind too much when they see what I did with Tropical Mae.

Inspired by the lack of Summer in the UK this month (probably the wettest July ever recorded), I wanted my entry to radiate warmth and sunshine. I attempted this by creating a sunray design made up of various patterned papers to provide a suitable background for Mae.

Mae herself has been coloured with Promarkers and I paper pieced her dress with a lovely pp from Basic Grey.

The sentiment 'blue skies and sunny days' is from a Papertrey Ink stamp set.

Procrastination Station

So much for getting flying on the yo-yo's... So far the 'grand' total is 7 LOL! I've just been procrastinating so much lately.

I have been making cards still though, so here's a round-up of the latest...

This was a thank you card for an amazing friend who took me to see Coldplay at the Emirates Stadium, just because she knew I'd always wanted to see them live! I used the Harvest Berries stamps and die from Papertrey Ink and the sentiment is from their Movers and Shakers set.

I used the same colour combo, Melon Mambo and Concord Crush, to make this birthday card for one of my best friends...

I've used the same stamp sets with the addition of a houndstooth background stamp.

Next up, a birthday card for a friend's little boy. The dinosaur stamps are from MyCuteStamps and the Argyle background stamp is from the same set as the houndstooth one, but I can't remember where I bought them - sorry!

The next two cards are for a very special little dude by the name of Jess. All I can say is that he's a really cool cat and deserved two cards for his birthday...

Digi stamp from Pink Cat Studio and sentiment stamp from Papertrey Ink.

This was mainly done on the computer, using Word. I pasted four of the digi image, from Soft Pencil, and then added borders, shadows and colouring. I added a marker pen effect to thicken the lines of the stamp. The 'birthday' border was from a pti stamp.

Finally, my piece de resistance...

I was lucky enough to win the new release of digistamps from SomeOddGirl last week. I decided to use 'Bicycle Kaylee' and try to the cloud colouring tutorial posted on the SOG blog. Here's a close up of the image...

I paper pieced her dress using some really cute floral paper from the Konichiwa range by Basic Gray.


Phew! Maybe I haven't been procrastinating as much as I thought after all!