Craft Kits of the Month

I'd let a couple kit of the month club projects fall behind so I decided to knock them out one week when the heat and humidity kept me indoors.

This is the Christmas in July project, a painted tin tree bell, or chime.  It came with enamel paint and when they say it dries quickly, they aren't kidding.  This was fairly easy, just paint & tie the bits together with jute. Hard to see but there's a dark red jingle bell at the bottom.  I think it's meant to be hung outside, no matter the weather.

This was June's project, an embossed velum lantern.  I had to glue the wood frame together, and then decorate 4 sheets of vellum paper with the flower rub ons and embossing.  I was stoked that the kit came with the embossing tool and very pretty and intricate stencil.

This, unfortunately, went from a project I was looking forward to, to one that I couldn't wait to finish.  Just a lot of measuring and detail work that I didn't have a lot of patience for.

I messed up one of the vellum sheets really bad, so the back panel is plain but for the embossing I did.  I was supposed to cut the scallops at the top and bottom, but the directions on how to hold the scissors and cut them made absolutely no sense, so I left the edges straight with the design punched in.  I also majorly screwed up the ribbon holes on the first piece of vellum.  The directions should have advised that those be cut in first, then work the embossing around them.  

The kit also came with a flameless, battery operated tea light but it isn't very strong, light-wise, so I used a candle for the purpose of these pictures.  I would not, however, use a real candle in the center unless it was protected by a glass votive cup.

Oddly enough, the panel that I had to fudge is the one that looks coolest with the candlelight!

This is August's Kit of the Month, a rain forest jasper necklace.  I am always less enthused about the beading projects because I already do so much of it.  When this kit came in, I did it right away.  It's not really 'me' so I'll put it in the pile to sell.

This one surfaced in a drawer.  I forgot all about it, but I got it years ago when I was still out west.  I wasn't real thrilled with it, but also didn't get around to returning it either, so I stuffed it in a drawer and forgot about it.  It came with brown beads and sequins and I thought it was so dull and ugly.  Who uses brown napkins? This isn't the 1970s.

I ended up using the stencils only and then using my own stash for the bead embroidery.  I screwed up with the heart, because it's going the wrong way when slid onto a napkin.  Also, I did a sucky job of sewing them together too. I may put a beaded edge around them to hide the crap ass sewing, but on the other hand, I don't feel like expending the effort. I am sure these will end up in the pile to go to Goodwill or something. My OCD made me do the kit, but really it served as just a practice exercise in bead embroidery using sequins.

Bead Embroidery Book

The bead embroidery book that I started out going gangbusters on came to a major halt in mid-June. I really hit a wall with it as I began to cut the designs down.  When I realized that many of them would have the white background showing, I got frustrated and put the project away for awhile.  

But I finally decided to get it finished and, overall, I'm pretty pleased with it, but for the white that has to show around some of the designs.  

Cover.

 

Threesome

Get your dirty little minds out of the gutter!  I didn't mean it that way!  ;-D

Here is the last of the beaded embroidery designs.  I started the first one at the end of April so it took just over a month to stitch all 7 designs.  Now I am working on the altered book into which they are going.

I noticed that my dear friend Marsha's birthday was coming up in June so I whipped up this beaded cross stitch and made a fridge magnet for her.  

Finally, my mom gave me an old wooden tray that saw a lot of cheese & crackers in its day, along with 4 pretty, patterned tiles.  She was going to send them to the thrift shop but asked if I wanted dibs on them first.  I painted the tray blue and envisioned stenciled designs on it.  I have always sucked at stenciling but I decided to give it another try.  

Stencil fail.

I was frustrated and posted the picture on Facebook, in the hope that someone could tell me what I was doing wrong.  Fortunately, few people commented that the trick to stenciling was to use an almost-dry brush, and dab at it, up and down, with the brush, applying more than one coat if need be.  It was a time consuming process, which took a couple of days to do.  I ended up taking over the kitchen table to get it done.

Stencil win!

As of the preparation of this blog post, I have not yet sealed the paint with Mod Podge.  After that's done, I will adhere the tiles to the center of the tray.

Inspired By The Truck

The second to last bead embroidery design, done in purples, teal and light green. 

Inspired by my sweet baby's truck, even though there's no green on it.

As an aside, I have entered a contest to win a journal on Crafty Ady's blog!  Please check her out and wish me luck!

A Sneak Peak at "The Project That Ate My Brain"

A few weeks ago, I featured my first foray into a bead embroidery fusion.  A few people asked me what I was gonna do with it. I said I wasn't sure, since it was just stitched onto some plain cotton fabric.

I've decided how I am going to use this, but of course that meant the need to stitch a whole bunch more patterns for this ambitious project.  

Here's a set of 2 smaller designs.

Close up of the green one.

I have fallen madly in love with varigated thread and floss!!!!

So I went out to Michael's in Wareham to buy some more cool threads & flosses.

The Asian letters were the hardest part of this design.

I had to shoot a couple of pictures of the virgin crochet thread before diving into it.  Ooooo PURTY!!!!

Rainbow!!!!!

As soon as I transferred this design I knew how it was going to be stitched, hence the need for all that rainbow thread.  I also tried to use Kreinik blending filament, a beautiful sparkly thread that comes in a variety of colours, but it's very difficult.  It breaks and tangles extremely easily, even when I used thread conditioner and also paused after every stitch to let the needle unwind.  I used it for the 5 hearts, and planned on using it in the butterflies.  I want to use it more often but the frustration level with it is quite high.  I'd also planned to use coloured floss to fill in the main design but my friend Sheila suggested I use black and I readily agreed.  

The black really made the coloured outline pop.  I hobbled through more sparkled thread tangles for 2 of the 3 butterflies.  I was going to add gold to the green butterfly, but by that point I just wanted to finish!!

This design was not as easy as I thought it would be.  I delusioned myself into thinking this would take one afternoon.  It took 2 days.  I was so sick of green, hence the hot pink.

Scary, innit?

Oh and then, I found a small bead stash I totally forgot I had and so of course I had to incorporate those beads into the next paisley design, instead of exclusively using Delicas like in the prior pieces shown above.

It was at this point that I began to suffer some fatigue on this project.  I got a brainwave for a mixed media project, centered around a silver Grateful Dead dancing bear pin that I had.  I removed the pin back to create a little scene with felt, buttons, sequins and embroidery.  This represents a line in the song, "Scarlet Begonias", that says, "The wind in the willows playing tea for two, the sky was yellow and the sun was blue..."  I am resisting the urge to festoon the sky with more stuff, but I'm not gonna rule it out.

The silver bear is inlaid with turquoise. I outlined him in rainbow thread.  

Since there was a pile of sequins on my table, I couldn't resist taking a shot.

And one out of focus so as to emphasize the sparklies.