embroidered spider web

i embroidered this pillow a while ago for sevsonlygirl on craftster for a personal swap.

the patchwork around the edges is leftovers from the halloween lap quilt i made earlier, pieced together, and the embroidery floss is the same shade of purple.


the centre is black cotton, and rather than transfer the pattern, i backed it with a light iron on interfacing that i'd drawn the pattern onto. it added some weight to the piece, which was important because the patchwork part ended up heavier with all the seams, and i wanted the entire front to be about the same weight.





i loved it.

swap info.....

i love swapping! here's some basic info for future partners -


what crafts do you do?:
sewing (pretty much everything- home dec, clothes, bags), quilting, some paper crafts, encaustics, silkscreening when i get my butt in gear, some crochet, embroidery and other needlework, machine embroidery, basic jewelery

any sorts of fabrics you love/hate?:
hate scratchy stuff! and microfibre gives me the willies.
i adore brightly coloured linen, modern quilting cottons, kona solids. i like brightly coloured trims like lace and pompoms and zippers and contrasts, like ruffles in unexpected fabrics. i love a lot of the prints that moda puts out, but i don't like how many of them have cream or brown undertones - blegh! i love japanese cotton/linens that are funkier, like echino and ruby star rising

something you just can't do but you would LOVE to learn/get something made like this!:
anything knit, polyclay dolls like the gothy ones on my wists (my attempts never turn out the way i want), stuffies (again, my attempts never turn out), felted stuff (needle felting and wet felting like dreads, beads, etc). artwork to hang on my walls, shrines, because mine never turn out the way i want them to. mini quilts, needlework, because everyone's style is so different.


Random Things
do you have any pets?
my sofie-bean, and then three other cats that i share with my mom and dad

do you have any kids *ages*?
nope. just sofie.

do you need something to carry your knitting/sewing with you?
sure! if it's to hold yarn, a zipper in the top is needed, so that sofie doesn't get into it and eat my yarn (she's a brat)

do you need another purse?
not a small one, but i could definitely use a messenger bag style purse. or a tote with a zipper to carry my yarn in. i need straps that go over my shoulder though - i tend to set purses down and forget them places unless they're attached to me!

what crafts do you admire?
knitting, felting, painting, mixed media, collage, resin, doll making, embroidery, glass work, mosaic, needlework of all kinds, modern quilting

do you collect anything?
lots of stuff...
- snowglobes,but just the dome shaped tacky ones. i LOVE vintage ones! i have a few from the 80s (like expo 86, and my light up nativity scene!) that i adore.
- old photos and negatives (erotica and regular)
- double and triple strand chunky pearls from the 50s. i love them, i have way too many pairs already, but i always want more!
- vintage veiling (with the flocked dots!), buy it, even if the hat sucks or there's no hat at all! it's so hard to find in good condition!
- virgin mary, lady of guadalupe and sacred heart stuff (oh, and rosaries! i LOVE old rosaries!), i try to avoid crucifixes and jesus stuff.
- vintage fabric and half made quilt blocks
- vintage aprons in awesome 40s and 50s prints
- pyrex/fire king/JAJ/pheonix/glasbake
- melmac
- old suitcases, especially train cases
- vintage clocks, cuckoo clocks
- fabric, obviously! i tried to resist the lure of designer fabrics, but i'm totally in love with the heather ross munki munki prints, anything designed by Melody Miller, the echino with the cameras, glasses, buses, etc
- vintage linens - bedding, table cloths, etc
- paint by numbers
- buttons. oh my lord, do i collect buttons. my favourites are the brightly coloured mid-century plastic/bakelite ones.
- typewriters
- sewing machines
- so, so much more


Jewelry
do you wear earrings?
i wear a single earring hooked through my tunnel. usually plastic and chunky. it needs to be on a shepherd's hook to go through my tunnel. feel free to use crappy quality metal, it bends easier anyway!

do you wear bracelets/cuffs?
not so much.

do you wear necklaces *lengths*?
i like big chunky necklaces mostly, that sit right around my neck. or simple necklaces with a chunky pendant... 18", i think.

do you prefer gold or silver findings?
silver please!


Clothing

Favorites
what is your favorite color?
to wear - black. i also love cherry red or burgundy.
in my house - my bedroom is black with silver, aubergine and cherry red details.
my kitchen is blues and greens. my studio/living room has blue curtains, and pink curtains but is otherwise a big mix of awesome bright colours. i love jewel tones, not so much primaries.

what is your favorite color to go with your favorite color?
red as above, silver, bright blue, purple, fuscia and neon pink.

do you have a favorite book you would like something made with?
i'd love anything francesca lia block themed. i have all my books on a shelf with the weetzie bat doll jan_on_ice made me, i'd love something to add to the "shrine"

do you have a favorite food?
gyosas!

Symbols: (such as hearts, stars, skulls, suns, moons)
stars are my favourite! sacred hearts or any other catholic imagery. anatomical hearts are fun too. bones. i love stripes and polka dots and non-brown leopard print. and lately i keep being drawn to zebra print, especially when it's fun colours. i adore typewriters and wooden grain elevators. oh, and chandeliers! i love them. winged hearts. wonky log cabins. half square triangles. birds, even if they're cliche. matryoshkas, cuckoo clocks. brocades. blue roses. doilies.


Allergies and Aversions
are there any colors you hate?
browns, yellows, all naturey colours that remind me of the 70s! sugary sweet pastels...

would you dislike receiving items made from animal products?
no, i'm fine with it.

is there anything you would rather not receive because of religious references?
no... i love religious stuff. i'd rather not receive non-catholic stuff though, or something that's meaningful to you religiously, because i like it for the kitsch factor, and it feels like it would be offensive if it meant something to you.

is there anything else you would dislike?
flowery, girly, pastelly, preppy, country... that stuff's not my style!

do you have any actual allergies?
scented stuff.... like candles, soaps, etc. even some fabric softeners. some metals give me rash, especially on my wrists and the back of my neck (where the clasp is), but i still wear necklaces with metal clasps!


Personality
what are your favorite movies?
tankgirl, cabaret, pretty in pink, some kind of wonderful, most john hughes cheesy 80s teen movies, heathers, crybaby, home for the holidays, pump up the volume

who are your favorite actors and actresses?
molly ringwald, annie potts, mary stuart masterson, robert downey jr, johnny depp pre-pirate!, winona ryder pre-crazy shit, liza minelli, clara bow, marilyn monroe, nicolas cage before he started doing all this adventure crap (remember him in moonstruck?!)

who are your celebrity crushes?
i don't really have any. i really love penelope garcia on criminal minds, that's probably my closest thing to a crush. her style is fabulous, she's fat and proud and quirky and brilliant, and the actress who plays her is queer, awesome!



*****************last updated March 7, 2011******************************

googley goodness

just out of curiousity, i googled craftydame and crafty_dame today.

apparently the wreaths were even more popular than i'd thought!

http://www.diylife.com/2007/10/03/wreaths-for-halloween-eyeballs-bats-and-fangs/

and there's lots of fun pictures if you image search crafty_dame, but not so much for craftydame. apparently there's another craftydame on myspace, and one on deviantart. damn them all!

more halloween goodies! stationary! images! vintage pics!

i signed up the 2nd halloween weekend swap last week, and i made a few fun things.

my partner wanted a cape for her wizard costume, and i managed to get a good enough deal on the fabric that i could actually afford to make it! i quite like the fabric actually, it has a really nice drape to it, and it's fairly sturdy.


(note my left over pj fabric pinned to the dressform for contrast! it's so damn bright!)


i didn't bother lining it, since she only needed it for a costume, so i just serged all the edges and hemed it. it was really hard to give up!

i also made her a halloween apron, since she likes to entertain. i used cotton halloween fabric for the main part, which is 45" wide, and gathered into the waistband. the ruffle is black cotton fabric with a swirly pattern, and was hell to gather! i don't know what the problem was, but my basting threads were breaking constantly. the fabric is fairly thick for cotton.



but i was so happy with how it turned out! so cute!

and then i also sent a long a little spider stuffy made of vinyl. it was just super quick, 20-30 minutes, but it's cute. i've been wanting to make vinyl stuffies, but hadn't gotten around to it.



i spent some time playing around with the bits and pieces i received on monday, and hauled out my own goodies as well. i made myself some stationary!

i made a version of it on tuesday morning, but i wasn't totally happy with it, and then i didn't think and deconstructed it before i could scan it. so i recreated it, adding a bit, and scanned it so that i can print out copies whenever i want without worrying about where the original is. i'll probably print it in black and white mostly, but it looks cool either way.


it's got a piece of microfiche, bingo cards, a plastic fan, an old card from flowers, bits of old greeting cards (i love the ones with the fake lace around the edges!), a couple of religious charms, some tickets, a little balsa wood tag, sushi grass, a piece of a bridge tablet, and bunch of the little pieces from the ephemeral mailbox museum. i really love it.

i centred it perfectly so that all i'll need to do is cut down the middle to have two sheets to write on. today i found a really awesome copy place pretty close to my house, where colour copies are only $0.26, and b&w are $0.05, and both are printed on a really nice weight of paper. i got a bunch of colour copies made for now, though i'll switch to b&w eventually.

i've also been totally obsessed with my scanner lately! i've been scanning old family photos, partially in preparation for a project my mom's doing for the party tomorrow, and party because my grandmother sent home a shoebox full of pictures in august, and we need to return them in november.

my scanner is one of my favourite things ever, i can do so many cool things with it! the other day i started scanning images of old wallpaper from the book "Off the Wall; Wonderful Wall Coverings of the Twentieth Century". these are a few of my favourites.


(aren't the deer fabulous? i adore them!)

i bought the book a couple of years ago on clearance, thinking one day i'll get a scanner and i'll be able to use them! i want to use them in paper stuff obviously, but i also want to try printing them on transfer paper and ironing them onto fabric to sew with.

and then a few days later i started scanning old photos. when i was in manitoba this summer i bought a stack of photos about 3" high for $5.00, and then about 10 more at $1 each from an antique store. i've been intending to scan them, but it's taken me a while to get my butt in gear! i've scanned 148 pics so far, and i'm not even near half way done. there were also about 10 negatives in the packet, and they're super fun too.
these are some of my favourites so far.

i love this couple

and then a few of the negatives. after i scanned them, i used photoshop to invert them so that i could see what the actual pictures looked like.



(doesn't the baby look like the abominable snowman? so cute!)

i have a couple other packages worth of projects to post, but i'll save them for another day, this is long enough!

the most incredible mail day

i received a fabulous package on monday, and it made me so happy. i ordered some zines from the ephemeral mailbox museum and it was such a lovely package.

i wrote up a huge description of it the other day, and then it got eaten by my vicious computer (in reality, more a comedy of errors in which the cat sat on my keyboard at the exact moment that the draft auto-saved), and it's taken me a few days to recreate it.


when i opened the envelope (which was decorated with lots of neat images and stickers!), this is what was inside. some cards, a very cool little b&w pin, a little skully hair clip, a super sweet letter, a copy of the mini-zine go by bus and the fabulous leopard print package, tied up with string. the cards are ads for www.parcellpress.com and for ms.films; DIY guide to film & video, another project that niku does. go by bus is an art zine, all colour copied collages with bits of writing mixed in. it's super lovely, and even has a teensy picture of clara bow in it (an awesome surprise!).


i opened up the leopard print package to find more packages inside! there was a the zine "pneumatic catalog", which is lovely i'm willing to forgive the american spelling of catalogue, and two cellophane envelopes holding more goodies. pneumatic catalog is an art zine made by a group called the scrappy zine co-op in austin, tx. it's all colour copies of 25 original pieces by 10 artists and zinesters and it has a tiny photo album tucked into a library style envelope inside the front cover. the photo album is titled "my family album" and is full of images from vintage yearbooks, etc. so gorgeous.


inside one of the cellophane envelopes was the zibe "last known address", which was written for an art zine swap. it's a zine about niku's move to austin, other moves she's made, houses she's lived in, and what moving and the various houses have meant to her. it's full of typewritten thoughts, hand drawn doodles, rubber stamped images, collaged bits and found images. paperclipped (with cool stripey clip) to the back cover are a few sheets of paper with stamped images on them, and tucked inside is a cute little envelope made of an old map. inside the envelope are little art stamps that either say "last known address" or have neat little images on them. the zine also comes with a seperate min zine which niku wrote about a trip to austin that she made before she actually moved there.


the last cellophane envelope held the art zine "postal curiousities and delights", which is a gorgeous zine in which niku talks about the important of mail in her life. it's typed on an antique typewriter and is full of collages, stamped images, old postal stamps and more goodies. it's a really amazing zine, especially considering the amount of work that goes into assembling each copy! the envelope was also full of little bits of ephemera from niku's collection, some of which i used the day after receiving them, i couldn't resist!

all in all it was an incredible package, and i think my aforementioned i've-never-met-you-but-you-seem-super-cool crafty crush has developed into adoration!

(please note that bits of the descriptions came from the etsy shop!)



in other crafty mail news, i sent out a bunch of packages earlier this week, and most have been received, so now i just have to get around to posting everything i made! i've also been receiving lots of goodies! halloween postcards from the postcard swap i'm in on craftster, and halloween ATCs from the halloween atc swap i'm organizing on craftster. i've envisioned an awesome way to display all the halloween atcs, i'll be sure to post it if it actually happens!

a few atcs and a birthday present

i made these atcs a while ago, but they've finally been received, so i can post them publicly. they were for the y and z round of the alphabet atc swap on craftster.org. i kinda feel like they're not as fancy as previous cards, but they do fit the theme pretty well. i guess they're just plain in contrast to the sequins!

y is for yellow yarn

i crocheted vintage yellow wool to the right dimensions, then embroidered the Y on with yellow ribbon. i sewed a bunch of beads on by hand, then machine sewed the crocheted piece onto a card backing. i quite like it actually, even if it is yellow! i think i used every single yellow thing i had in my enormous stash for this card - i didn't realize how rarely i used yellow!

Z is for zine

i made a little ATC sized zine explaining what a zine is. this one was rather time consuming, but the hardest part was the photocopying - there's a reason why most zines are some even division of 8.5"x11"!







i made some atcs over the weekend, but most of them are secret. i can post this one, i made it for myself. very simple, i just wanted an excuse to use the rub on, but i love it.



and here's the aforementioned birthday present for my dad.

i'm pretty proud of how the stencil turned out, though i'm not too impressed with how the bleach bled onto other parts of the shirt, or the fact that i oversprayed bleach onto the neckline. oops!

i haven't decided if i'll leave it, or if i'll cut out the beer mug and sew it onto another shirt. i'm going to wait until after i give it to him, to make sure that's the right size anyway.

i think he'll really like it, he's super into brewing his own beer, and we tease him about his obsessive javex-ing of his brewing supplies, so it includes two of his favourite things! his birthday isn't till november, but we're doing a surprise birthday party since it's the big 5-0, and it's next weekend, so i'll give it to him then.


also got an amazing package in the mail today, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow, it's bedtime.

a sad day, purchases and my secret love of polyester

recycling day this week was a sad sad day in amy-land.

the newspaper dress finally went to the big recycling depot in the sky.

it had a long life for the average newspaper, and despite attempts to protect it, it was getting pretty beat up. it had been taken on and off the dressform so many times (cause, ya'know, dress forms have other uses as well, such as fitting burlesque costumes) and had been moved multiple times and the skirt was rather rumpled and the entire garment had yellowed quite badly. so it was time.

in an attempt to comfort myself, i went to the thrift store. (handy excuse that was!) this particular thrift store used to be just a few blocks from my house, but moved further away, and i rarely go there now, as much as i like it. as a general principle, i much prefer the little independant thrift stores, the type that are fundraising for hospital auxilary committees, fire fighters, hospices, etc, and tend to be staffed by fairly cranky older women. this one is hospital auxilary, i think, and staffed by older women, but oddly enough, they're quite friendly, though they do tend to get flustured when i ask odd questions. (why don't they sell cards with writing on them? i'd buy them! i only buy the vintage cards for the images anyway, and i love reading old letters!)

i was in search of doilies, because i'm ALWAYS in search of doilies, but didn't find any. however, i TOTALLY lucked out on old knitting books!

the photos are so fabulous, all the knits are so fitted in wonderful 40s styles and the models are so glamourous, holding their cigarettes while posing in front of travel posters.
i'm so in love with them. i have a particular fondness for this one, copyright 1972, because the models are wearing body suits under their capes, and i find that extremely amusing, though i'll definitely get more long term enjoyment out of the 40s ones.


my sister came over last night to show off the vogue knitting magazines she'd found at value village, and was disapointed to discover that i beat her with my 1949 edition for $0.50 - her two were $1 each and from the late 50s and early 70s. still very cool though!

i also got this book, which they put out as i was sorting through the horrific piles of country style craft magazines to find the previous gems -

it's full of absolutely gorgeous drawings of women with impossibly tiny waists and perfectly adorned children.

oh, so lovely. i'll be scanning these images, i'm sure.

then today i had to go to tsawwassen for my usual massage therapy appointment (which hurt like a bitch, ohmygod), and my sister came along and went to the thrift store while waiting for me. i headed over there afterwards, and found a jackpot of doilies! yay! i love doilies. i prefer the really thin ones, but i'll settle for the thicker ones in a pinch. they're so much fun to craft with, like the purse i made several years ago. i dye them fun colours, and sew 'em onto stuff. i've done quite a few skirts with doilies on them as well, which was partly why i was so disapointed to see that idea shown in the latest edition of crochet today - my idea dammnit! (i found consolation in the fact that my skirts were cuter though) i should post those one of these days, remind me.

anyways, back on track, the point being i have a large project in mind which require ridiculous amounts of doilies and fabric dye, so i buy them wherever i can find them. and today, i found them at the hospice thrift store! (in all honestly, my sister found them - she even sorted them by price for me as i was walking over, so when i arrived i had perfect little piles to choose from! aww!)

as you can see, i found a few other goodies too. a very teensy 70s dress in pale blue crepe with black roses and a filigre type design, which will make a lovely skirt, a few pieces of leather to play with for an idea i've been working out, orange earrings that will make great bobby pins, and a green plaid polyester skirt which i'll shorten drastically to make into a skirt i'd actually wear.

i have a slightly unhealthy obsession with polyester, i really adore it. i know, everyone else hates it, and i probably would too if it was my only option and i had to wear it against my skin, but the vintage 70s polyester makes SUCH great skirts. it always hangs so nicely and it lasts FOREVER. there is a reason why the hutterites use old polyester pants for their rugs - it wears like nothing else.

so i had a few exciting shopping expedition, both of which exhausted me for the rest of that particular day, as sad as it is. but they were satisfying, especially given that this week has been so terrible healthwise that i got very little else accomplished, sewing/crafting or otherwise. i did a bit of quilting, and a bit of paper crafts, but for swaps, so they must remain secret for now.

i did manage to finally mail a ridiculously late swap package, so i'll be able to post pictures of everything i made by late next week.

tonight i took lots of painkillers and worked on a project for my dad's birthday, since i have the house to myself for the weekend. i think it turned out pretty well, but final opinion is reserved until after it comes out of the dryer.

quilting on the brain

i have quilting on the brain lately, i just can't stop day dreaming about all the quilts i want to make!

i found this tutorial today (thanks to kate for pointing it out!) and i really really love it.... how fun is it? here's another version that was made using the tutorial.

i'm really tempted to create my own scraps for one of the projects i've got in mind. i've been hemming and hawing over the best quilt design to use for the fabric, not wanting anything too "quilty", as the recipient is most definitely not traditional in style. this might be it, i'll just have to think about it a bit more...

i love cupcakes!

i'm not a very good cook. i have a short attention span, don't pay attention to details, and get flustered easily when i have multiple pans going at once.

that being said, i'm apparently very good at making cupcakes. everyone raves about how fabulous my (cake mix and purchased icing) cupcakes are, and i still can't figure out what it is i do that makes mine taste so much better than the ones other people make (how DO you screw up a cake mix? i've never understood). i'm pretty specific about my supplies - i use brand name cake mixes, and a specific store brand of icing that's not nearly as sweet as most, and my cupcakes always turn out super moist and yummy.

lately i've discovered a few fun cupcake/cake blogs, and while they're WAAAY fancier than anything i make, they're so much fun to read! the cake journal has some neat tutorials, including this one for a simple and easy cupcake stand that i MUST try making. and cupcakes takes the cake seems to find the most amazing cupcakes to show off, it's total eye candy!

i made cupcakes friday night, and iced them saturday, and then felt too crummy to go to the potluck on saturday night that i'd baked them for, and now i have LOTS of cupcakes! i took some to friends tonight, and they were very appreciative!

i should take some better pics tomorrow, cause the ones i took before i left weren't very good - only this one turned out -

mini halloween cupcakes! i bought the sprinkles at ross when i was in portland, and they've little gravestones, ghosts, pumpkins and bats. so fun.

i made these cupcakes early in the summer for a potluck that i DID feel up to attending

and i obsessed quite a lot about how orange my red sprinkles turned out... i was rather disappointed!

that's pretty much my standard cupcake - candy in the middle and fun sprinkles around them. i did do a super intricate batch once for a friend who got married, her wedding colours were blue and silver, so i made cupcakes to bring to work with blue sprinkles and silver hearts on top - and i made the chocolate hearts in a mold, then silver leafed them! super time consuming!

i really love cupcakes, whether they're real or vinyl.

i gave my massage therapist the orange wreath today, and before i left the house, i gluegunned some orange ribbon to the back to hang it from. i got to his office, pulled it out of the bag, and the ribbon came unglued. apparently the glue gun isn't good enough for a hanging ribbon!

luckily, he had a nail in his door that he could just set the wreath on, and it didn't really need a hanging ribbon anyway. i think he liked it, he was pretty surprised that i'd made it for him.

i made another wreath yesterday, i should post it too.


today i experimented with dyeing vinyl toys (ho-hum, which was disapointing) and with bleach stenciling (which was SOOO cool!!!).

i also bought some more embroidery floss, and discovered i'd lost one of the flosses for the piece i'm in the middle of. and of course i only had one skien of it, so i can't even match it by the number now. damn!

halloween lap quilt

i haven't made a quilt in years, and lately i've been obsessing over starting again. i've got some ideas for quilts i'm going to work on before christmas, but i was impatient, and wanted to make one NOW.

i signed up for the weekend halloween swap on craftster.org, and i figured i'd make a halloween quilt with the ridiculous amounts of halloween fabric i have.

my partner was psyche, and we have super duper similar tastes - our bedrooms are even the same colour scheme (eggplant and black)! we agreed to do a bigger package for each other, we said 6-8 hours, and this took me about 7 i think.

i just did a simple rail fence, since i was doing it on such a deadline. the purple spider web fabric is from a fancier quilting store, but i got it 50% off so it was actually affordable, the purple i already had, and the black swirly fabric i bought by the pound from a fabric outlet in burlington, wa. it was $2/pd and i got yards and yards of it for $5.50! i used the black for the backing as well. the batting came from the same place, so i don't know exactly what it is - it's a poly/cotton blend, but it's flat like cotton batting. (i'm not familiar with all the batting options you guys in the US have! when i used to quilt more, we only had 3 batting options available in canada!) regardless, the batting handled well, and was $15 for 10 yards (45" wide), so i couldn't pass it up!


i forgot to measure it before i mailed it (oops!) but it was supposed to be about 45" x 65", so i'm assuming it came out about that. it's the perfect size to wrap around you lengthwise.

i tried to use my walking foot for the first time, and i hated it, and then i tried to use the spring quilting foot, and the tension was terrible, no matter what i did, and i had no control over it at all, so i just did the quilting like regular sewing and stitched in the ditch. the batting was pretty thin, so it worked okay. my stitching in the ditch was not perfect at all, and i think i'm going to invest in some clear thread for my next one!

i'm perfectly willing to admit that my binding was mediocre... but i figured it was still a decent job for a weekend quilt!

(click the pics to see the whole thing)

fabric ATCS

i made these in the beginning of september, but i was waiting for their recipients to receive them before i posted them, and then i forgot. oops!

i had been feeling crummy, and they were the perfect thing to keep me occupied while i sat on the couch in front of countless episodes of CSI.

(oh, as usual, click on the picture and the full image will open in a new window. if you know how to make my blog wider so it'll stop cutting off my pictures, let me know!


the first three were made for round 2 of the fabric ATC swap on craftster.org.

hail mary
the one on the left was supposed to be mine, cause i screwed it up (the text is upside down!), and i made it first to figure out how exactly i wanted to do the beading.


i forgot to print two backs onto the iron on paper, so mine doesn't have a back. i was going to add a loop and hang it in my bathroom, but a friend fell in love with it on sight, and i couldn't say no!

i made up the background in photoshop, it's "hail mary" typed out enough times to fill the rectangle. then i printed the background and the inside picture, cut out the picture as an oval and cut an oval out of the background, ironed them on at the same time. before i removed the paper i ironed some batting on too. then i pressed the edges under on the front and the back. i did the blue beading before i joined them, one bead at a time, and the scattered pink ones. then i hand sewed the front and the back together and sewed the pink beads on the edges (3 beads at a time, going from front to back). for the second one i added another shade of pink beads to the border cause i thought the other ones were too pastely.


day of the dead
for the second one i added another shade of pink beads to the border cause i thought the other ones were too pastely.

embroidery and sequins! i did some embroidery with metallic thread too...
i was pretty proud of my skull, i always get stressed out about day of the dead skulls, i can never draw them properly! i used regular embroidery floss, and the metallic machine embroidery thread.


spider web

embroidered web and one of the fabulous buttons i bought at jo-anns in portland. (jo-anns has SO MUCH cool stuff!)

the spider one is simpler than the others i did for the swap, because i was having inspiration issues. i really love it though!

i got totally into the beading after the hail mary card, and made this one for my friend joanne.

i found this fabric with little women's symbols on it at a fabric outlet in burlington, wa and i couldn't resist buying a yard of it... i have no clue what else to use it for, but i thought it was fun for joanne. she's been so active is women's organizations and women's committees over the years, i think she'll love it.

mexican mini-shrine atc. it's atc size, but it unfolds.
this one was originally going to be for the ATC swap, but i decided it was way too complex compared to the others, plus i really didn't want to give it up!

all sequined on the front (with a green skull bead and a loop of pink elastic for closure)

opened up. lots of embroidery! everytime i thought i was done i'd be like "oh, but i think it needs a bit more of this colour...."! the swallows are iron on transfers. the banner at the bottom says remember, and the empty square in the centre is actually a little vinyl pocket to put a photo in. i adore it.

and the full back! you can see all the sequins, and the tag, which is actually wrong now that i'm not using it for the swap!

and then i made this card as a thank you for kittykill and her hubby after i stayed with them for a few days in portland earlier in the month.

embroidered thanks, black and orange sequins and beads, balsa wood skull
i put a string of beads on it in case they wanted to hang it, but i threaded them loose enough that they can fall down behind the card if they want to just lean it against a shelf or something.