Storykeep - Magical Arrival: The Second Post

I finished two more colors over the weekend.  He is now 42% done!  Since this time there's only one picture I made the image much bigger. He does, however, look like he has a horrible skin condition, but we'll clear that up, I guess even dragons go through puberty.

I'm pretty excited with how far along he is.  I am working on the colors that have the most stitches right now and that does get a little boring, but I just have to keep reminding myself how good he's looking and how awesome he'll look when complete.

I have a few goals for this year, one of them is to complete this guy.  If I keep house sitting for my parents he might get done much quicker than I originally anticipated.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Storykeep - Magical Arrival
Original Artist: Anne Stokes
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: January 31, 2012
Fabric: 18ct. Aida
Floss: DMC 2 over 1
Percentage: 42.09% complete
Colors: 20 of 89 complete
Stitches: 10,007 out of 23,775

I'm over halfway through the color with the fourth most stitches, but I won't get that finished right now, nor will it get finished this week.  I have family coming to visit so I'll be doing touristy stuff with them and my local family.  It should be fun, I haven't been to some of these places in quite a while; the wax museum, Universal Studios (Hollywood), Medieval Times and much more that I can't remember.  I just show up and get in the car.

Storykeep - Magical Arrival: The First Post

This is one of my unfinished projects.

The chart was made by Heaven and Earth Designs, also known as HAED.  The image was made by Anne Stokes and is called Magical Arrival.  The chart I chose was the "storykeep" version, which is a thin and long version usually for creating bookmarks, or storykeeps, as HAED calls them.  The image to the right is an image of the actual artwork by Anne Stokes.

HAED recommends that their charts be stitched 25ct. Lugana or Dublin linen.  I did not want to keep this cute little guy in a book so I decided to stitch him on 18ct.  He will end up being about 4" x 17.5".

The normal information that stitchers like to see is fabric & floss used, number of threads used.  I'm using 18ct, Aida with DMC 2 over 1.

To the left is after completing one color and on the right is after completing two colors, both dark browns.

I added one more color, a very dark green, located on the left.  I was house sitting and since this is a small project I decided to take it and a few colors with me.  I thought it would last me all weekend, but since I'm writing this halfway through Saturday, that obviously didn't work out.  On the right is where I'm at right now.  I ran out and bought some more thread from JoAnn's so I'm back in business.  I'll update again once after the weekend's over, or sooner, depending on how much I get done.

Flowers and Beads

So this is my first post of an actual project, or two.

I forgot to mention in my original post that I have also started doing French Beaded Flowers.  I have quite a few and I'll post them as I find old photos to post, but for now I have my two most recent completions.

First off is a Moth Orchid that I made for my Sister's Mother-in-law:

The plant itself is made with Czech Seed Beads size 11/0, wire and floral tape.

The leaves are a transparent dark green, the petals are opaque pearl and the stamens are opaque yellow.  Everything's stuck into a piece of floral foam hidden by moss in a square glass vase.  I actually painted the bottom of the vase so that you couldn't see the floral foam in case you were so inclined to pick it up and take a look.  I hope I made it look enough like the moss I used, but I don't have a picture of that so you'll have to just imagine it.

Now, a trio of roses with a fern for my brother-in-law's grandmother.  Now, you may think it's odd of me to do this, and you may very well be correct, however, I found out that she also makes beaded flowers and we bonded over this.  However, she recently hurt her shoulder and isn't really able to do it much anymore, so I pulled this together:

Again, the plant is made with nothing more than Czech Seed Beads size 11/0, wire and floral tape.

The fern in the background is made with light green seed beads.  The leaves on the roses are medium green.  The roses are made of opaque white, opaque pink and transparent purple.  I found the vase at Michaels and thought it would work perfectly.  The bow is a sheer pink to lighter pink.  I learned to tie these bows while I was at Michales from the most talented woman in floral design I know, Gloria.  The vase is filled with floral-fil.  When it was almost at the top I used hot glue to kind of create a lid so they won't all fall out if it gets tiped and provided more stability for the heavy flowers.  Then more floral-fil on top of that and we're done!

There's more to come so stay tuned while I show you the stuff I've done in the past mixed in with stuff I'm currently working on.

A first time for everything...

I'm trying something new.  I'm wondering if keeping a blog will help me work on projects faster as I share my progress with friends, family, and complete strangers.... Hi complete strangers!

A little about me:
I've been cross stitching for as long as my mother would trust me with a sharp instrument, the needle.  As near as I can tell that was probably back around the age of 9.  She taught me how to cross stitch and her father taught her how to needlepoint, so it's a family affair.

I worked at Michaels Arts & Crafts for four years... very dangerous, I don't recommend it for any crafters, the employee discount was good though.  I started working there because of the discount and I loved cross stitch and painting.  I swore to stay out of the scrap booking and beading/jewelry making section.

>Umm... that didn't work.  I found a horrible book... okay, it's a wonderful book, but it has cost me so much money with projects.  I loved the idea of creating pictures with beads and quickly tried the samples.  There was one type of stitching I liked the most:  Peyote with wonderful little beads called delicas.

After my foray into beading I found something amazing, in my mind at least.  In one of the catalogs I saw an ad for a company that sold jump rings so you could make your own chain maille!  Now I am a major fantasy buff so this was very exciting for me, and the end product looked amazing.  Now, I'm not talking armor, even though I have a pattern or two for that, I'm talking about necklaces, bracelets & earrings.  Very very cool!

When I was younger, probably closer to the 10 year old stage, my next door neighbor taught me how to crochet, I remembered how to chain, but that was about it.  Michaels has book teaching you how to crochet, so again with my discount a book was purchased and... if you can believe this... with the same crochet hook and yarn my neighbor originally taught me with and gave to me I retaught myself how to crochet.  And yes... I still have them.

So that's enough about me for now.  Did I mention I'm long winded? :)

So I don't claim I'll be the most consistent blogger... it'll probably be a little sporadic.  But it's my blog, I can do what I want.

So thanks for stopping by and bear with me as I am new to blogging and will hopefully make this more my own as time wears on.