This week on Instagram {3.14-3.24}

Good Friday, friends!

I'm combining the last two weeks because I didn't post as much as I usually do.

My phone (Sony Xperia) stopped working.  And I mean it completely bricked it self.  It took a few days to get a new one.  Then 4 days later, it bricked it self again.  I'm now on my third in 9 days.

Awesome.

Anyway.

Instagram, yay!

1. My biy is crawling.  It's an awkward jerky random crawling.  But it's also effective.

2. Baby's first mythos.  I love Greek mythology and Neil Gaiman.  Both of my kids are named after personifications and characters in Gaiman's The Sandman.  Violet Moirae (fate) and Westin Oneiros (dreams).  As it is Greek, there are beautiful explanations.  Google it.  :)  

3 and 4.  My dream catcher I won on a giveaway.  It beautiful!  It's by BettyB.  Like her page.  It's totally worth it to see what she makes. 

5.  New business cards with a preview of the new wordpress site.  This is my incentive to get the site going.  We're maybe 50% done now.  My husband is a software engineer.  I get domain names for my birthdays.

6.I bought a uke.  I hate learning to strum.

7.  Instamatic.  I need to take some photos and count and catalog all my old cameras.  So many are just so well made and good looking.

8. Sugar n Cream.  I love this color so much.  For an ex goth I really love these springy colors.  No shame!  I forget what I bought this for, but at the time I needed it.  :)

9.Size 6 toddler bowling shoes.  We took the kid bowling for the first time.  She's a smash and grab kinda chick, so she loved the concept.  My husband and I met through mutual friends at a bowling ally in 2002.  So, this was a bit of a special outing for us.   He's still a much better bowler than me.  Jerk.

10.  This afghan was started in September for a baby that was born 4 weeks ago.  :/  I'm not usually so behind.  I also like bright socks.

11.  A local theater plays free movies Sunday morning.  I took Vi to see how long she would last in a theater.  Longer than me.  This movie sucks.  But it was really fun watching her reaction to a theater.  She asked me for popcorn.  I have no idea how she knew. 

12.  Middle of the night exhausted selfie.  I still need a profile pic to put on everything that's recognizable.  As my "brand".  

13.  My boy is sweet and cute.  :)

14. My best friend most of my life moved to Italy in January.  I'm sending her a little care package.   This one is a little different from the other's I've made and I like this line up a bit better. It's tiny tho.  If her husband wasn't so tall it would fit in a 3" hoop.

15.  An antique wheelchair.  We were congregating in the hospital waiting test results.  They were not good.  I take photos when I'm upset.  And I have a thing for old medical equipment.

Do you have an instagarm?  follow for follow?  ;)

{How to} Stitch on the Unstitchable

OR- How to stitch on stuff other than fabric.

Don't get me wrong, I love fabric.  But I like this a teensy bit more.  

I don't make things that can be made in a simpler medium. Meaning if fiber doesn't add to the art I don't make it fiber art.   A cross stitched portrait is beautiful.  But it's time consuming and I would rather just hang a photo.  

What I love is to combine mediums.  I'm not an artist.  I'm a try-er.  

And this is something I had to try.

First - get your materials

In this case I had a cardboard box from Hobby Lobby.  You know those brown boxes.  I think they are cardboard.

A phrase printed big enough to put onto said box.

A large needle, tape (double sided and normal), scissor, thread, ruler, a pen and a "poker" (an Awl tool).  An Awl tool is used for leather crafts.  It's near the jewelry at Micheal's.  You can use a needle too but the eye hurt my fingers when I pushed it through so I switched to this with it's comfy rubber handle.   It works perfectly.

Use double sided tape to adhere the phrase to the box.

Double sided works better than normal tape because it's somehow not as adhesive.  It comes right off, not ripping anything.

Figure out where you want your holes to be.  I chose to split up the larger lines so the thread wouldn't easily get caught on anything.  I used the ruler to make it uniform.

It ended up looking like this.  The purple dots is where I poked the holes.

Poke your holes.

Here's the back.

Your holes should be somewhat uniform, so try to give the same pressure with each hole punch.  This will take a while.  Longer than you would expect.  I had to stop to rest my wrists a few times.

I used a simple backstitch and all 6 strands of DMC.  And this is the result.

Added a border.

You have tape to tape down the excess when beginning and ending thread.  I don't try to tie them in simply because this is easier and it holds firm and flat.

I've used this method to stitch on paper, cardboard, boxes, canvas, and leather purses.  At some point I want to stitch on wood.

 At the moment I'm trying to decide if I should stitch on my new coach purse I got off ebay.  Hmmm.

{instagram giveaway} MadebyBettieB Dreamcatcher.

I never win anything.  I'm making* cranes to try to put some positive luck out there.

*  hahah I haven't made one in a week.  Sigh.

I made 10 in one day and reposted this

A few days later I was notified that I had won!

"Betty" is extremely friendly and creative person.  The whole experience was a pleasant one from start to finish.

I'm still in shock, especially when I received this beautiful dream catcher with a phrase from T.S. Eliot.

"Anxiety the handmaiden of creativity", that I picked it out.  :)

The stitching is beautiful.  The colors are gorgeous.  I honestly couldn't have been more happy with it or impressed.

YOUGUYS!

Lookit.

 Support my new favorite artist at facebook or instagram.  

{photography} Couple Shoes

One of the things I love about photography is the attempt to tell a store purely with images.  We have all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words.  I feel the real trick it the picture being worth the correct 1,000 words. 

What do you think their names are?

Stitched: Little Leather Purse.

I found this purse at a local thrift store and picked it up for 2 bucks with the intention of stitching something on it.

I'd say 90% of what I work on is hair brained ideas I've had and HAVE to try.

I decided on the word I wanted on it and drew it up on some graph paper.  I got a cute little graph paper notebook at Target a while back.

I've been looking for a 12X16 notebook of graph paper but I can't seem to find any.

I then straight pinned it to the purse and stitched right over it.  It just took some tweezers and a little patience to rip the paper off.

I love this teal.  DMC 3849.  It seems all my favorite colors are 38 something.  Interesting.

It's going to be summer soon. This is my light summer purse.

¹cache

 noun \ˈkash\

1

a :  a hiding place especially for concealing and preserving provisions or implements

b :  a secure place of storage

2

:  something hidden or stored in a cache

3

:  a computer memory with very short access time used for storage of frequently or recently used instructions or data —called also cache memory

Do you stitch on anything that isn't made to stitch on?

Profile Photo - Help me to decide.

I'm been working on a conversion to wordpress and with it I'd like to have one photo for the blog, Instagram, facebook, google, everything.  I'm having a hard time deciding which I like better.  Help me decide.

Hard, soft or just start over.

What do you think?

It's really just good advice. { a cross stitch gift }

Did you see this fb status that was going around after the New Year?

I did not "like" this status.  I did, however, have two friends post it.  I make things for people constantly.  That's really all I do.  I don't sell much at all.  And I don't make things for myself.  I do commissions and lots of gifts.

Roz posted this status and then we had a conversation about a cross stitch that she saw that was funny.  So I decided to make her one without "like"ing anything.  It jumped to the top of my list because It was fun to do.

I wanted to make it as unassuming and "granny" as possible.