Shop Update Photo Dump :)

I've been busy creating new items for the shop, including a new design with bird's nests on linen with moss and fabric-wrapped branches. THOSE are fun to make! Sweet and tiny in 3-inch painted wooden hoops.

I also made another tree stump that's a bit smaller than usual, with sculpted mushrooms instead of wool. When I was done with the new tree, it kinda reminded me of the movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind...when Richard Dreyfuss is sculpting that shape out of mashed potatoes.. :)

So I'm doing a photo dump here and then I have to get back to making more stuff to prepare for cold-calling on local gift and art shops. Hope you're having a wonderful week.

What I made this week

After what seemed like months of running into a brick wall with every crafty idea that I had, this week finally felt like I was doing something right! Everything I did just seemed to fall into place and look the way I imagined it. From the mixing of wool colors and getting the layering right, to actually having the perfect color ribbon on hand, I am one happy girl. I wish I could bottle that up, whatever it is!! Here's what I finished this week:

Birds Nest Dimensional Mini Wall Art - 3 inch hoop 

Tree Stump Mushrooms Wool Scene   

Faux Terrarium

Do you ever have those times when nothing goes right, and then suddenly, BAM it works?

♥

Re-opening my Etsy shop

Today I re-opened my Etsy shop after a year-long hiatus. I figured it's time to expand my little presence on the web and thought I would give it another shot there. I only have a few items up right now, it's taking me a little time to get used to the changes that have been made in the last year...but all in all, the listing process itself is easier than I remembered it. Boy was I surprised to have one of my items put in a treasury within an hour after the shop's re-opening! What a great welcome back! Here are a couple items that I hope do well...

Needle felted and embroidered bird's nest wall decor:

Needle felted mushrooms pin cushion/miniature scene:

Wish me luck! :)

♥

More embroidery practice

Hi there! I hope you're enjoying your Sunday :) It's been raining here all weekend but that's perfectly ok...it gave me an excuse to stay home and play!

I finished a couple embroideries while listening to the thunder and rain...I tell ya, there's nothing more peaceful!

The first one has cherry blossoms on cotton fabric:

And the second one I just finished about an hour ago...dandelion fluffs on cotton fabric. For fuzziness, I used a thin mohair yarn that I still had from a few years ago when I was crocheting teddy bears. I can't stress enough how happy I am that I save EVERYTHING =)

That's it for now, my son starts high school tomorrow (holy COW) and there's last-minute stuff that needs to be done. Have a great week!

♥

Happy Saturday and New Crafties

Hello friends! It's been a pretty fast and busy summer; it's hard to believe that it's time to start thinking about autumn already! How come the older you get, the faster time flies past? There must be a scientific explanation.

I've been having fun challenging myself to new crafty things...I'm still practicing embroidery and I thought I'd try an animal. Of course I chose to try a fawn because, well, fawns just rock my cute-o-meter! The back of the piece is a bit of a mess, but it's only going on my own wall anyways, so it doesn't matter.:) This is a 4-inch hoop, and I topped it with a bow of vintage seam binding.

I also tried my hand at some really tiny-scale needle felting. I'm still obsessed with bird's nests for some reason, I seem to try to incorporate them into everything and it just never gets old to me :) This one measures just under 1 cm. The glass bottles have been in my stash for so long, and I just ran across them recently. Don't you love when you find stuff in your supply stash that you had forgotten about, and it gives you a ton of new ideas? THAT'S why we hate to throw things away, see?

I'm off to do some house-cleaning, then it's back to the crafty stuff. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

♥

Learning new crafties=stagnant blog :/

It seems I have neglected my blog once again. Aaannnd here comes the excuse, er, I mean reason---

I have been occupied with learning something new... hand embroidery. Not embroidering hands, but embroidering BY hand ;)  Sewing machines and I do not get along so I do everything thread-related, umm, on my own (I really didn't want to say "hand" again. And yet there it is).
A friend of mine picked up a little organizer box full of cotton floss for me at a yard sale for 50 cents (!), it was arranged all pretty by color, and it went to my head...I HAD to learn how to use this beautiful stuff! I had done some embroidery in the past, if you could call it that. I never knew any proper stitches, and it never looked quite right to me. Enter Youtube :) Along with a DVD I picked up for $11 that teaches 20+ stitches for silk ribbon embroidery (yep, got into that too).
So, armed with my very newbie skills, I decided to try and mesh some of my older crafty knowledge with the new stuff, and came up with a piece of 3D wall art: the needle felted nest stands out from the base and holds tiny little pearl beads--

I have to say that right now I am addicted to making French knots. Love it!

I have 3 more in various stages of doneness right now, which I'll post when they're finished.

Until then, I will leave you with Leo and his huge blue eyes O_O    Have a great week!

Crochet Vines Part 1

So I have a lot of blank white space on my walls since my "ex-roommate" moved out (he had huge flags all over the place, I never was that crazy about that look so I quietly took them down on moving day so he wouldn't forget them).
Now I have the walls all to myself. Huge, white and empty. I've looked around for some framed art, but never really found anything that grabbed my attention unless I wanted to spend LOTS of money, which I don't, because of the aforementioned mover-outer. I'm keeping this place up by myself, I'm much happier, but poor! So thrifty is the way to go.

I love the look of vines, so I thought I'd try crocheting some. That way, I can make them any colors I want, as large as I want.
I was browsing around JoAnn's with a friend of mine the other day and came across some beautiful yarn that would work perfectly for this project. It's a wool-acrylic blend called Traditions by Debbie Mumm, and the color is called Pine Needle. It was $6 a skein, but with my trusty 50% off one item coupon (told ya, thrifty!) it was mine.
The photo represents probably a couple hours of work on and off, and I still have a lot to add. I just started with a long chain; branching off, adding leaves and slip-stitching back down to the original chain whenever the mood struck. I think it's definitely going to end up wild-looking, which I like...I don't think vines should be symmetrical and be perfectly proportioned.
It's really a fun project, no counting or pattern-reading, completely free-form work (which I happen to love). I figure when it's done, I'll put it up on the wall with some double-sided foam mounting squares that I have. I can cut the squares into the tiniest little pieces and tack the vines to the wall, using the foam pieces to guide their "growth". I'll post an update when I have more done.

♥