Laraine's Pink Orchid Pin

I tend to stay away from talking about personal matters, but this one I'm going to mention.

My sister's mother-in-law was just recently diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer.  Every year there's a breast cancer walk in Fashion Island in Newport Beach, California, and my sister has put together a team.  Somehow I was able to get the day off and will be able to run & participate.

For anyone who's interested here's the website:  2015 Komen Orange County Race for the Cure.  I know this is something that affects most if not all of my followers.

Now my reason for posting.  I decided to make an orchid french beaded flower for her in the classic breast cancer pinks.  She loves orchids and I did make her a previous orchid, a moth orchid, which can be seen in one of my earliest posts here.

I started on it Wednesday night and put all the beads onto the wire.  Here's an in progress photo I took as I was putting the beads on the wire.

That's pretty much everything I need, the beads, the wire, some wire cutters, scissors and hemostats, and the iPad, it has the pattern on it.

I went to my parent's house today to help with the race packets and finished up the flower there.  Here are the five large petals.

Apparently at this point my mother was wondering how it was going to possibly look good.  I think she used the adjective hideous when she was recounting her thoughts before I started assembly.

I forgot to take another picture with all the parts, so here it is done.  I took two pictures, one on white so you could see the pinks better, the other on burgandy so you could see the flower better.

It looks better in real life, I think I need to get my sister take a good picture.  I glued it into a boutineer (I'm not sure this is spelled correctly) holder I purchased at work.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Cymbidiun Corsage (changed to pin)
Flower Design: Dalene Kelly
Started: Septemeber 23, 2015
Finished: Septemeber 25, 2015
Beads: 11/0 Czech Seed Beads
Wire: 26 ga. Artistic Wire

Okay, there we go, on to the next project, whatever that may be.

Ophelia: Ninth Post - Pages 9 & 10 (2)

Okay, warning: I got VERY picture happy.  I did a small project, which I need to post about.  A gift for a family friend, so Ophelia took a little bit longer to finish than I thought.

So this time I was finally able to keep myself on track and finished all the darkest colors on the left hand side of the two pages.

I found her lips.  Good.  Without them I could only think of Pac Man when I looked at her mouth, and she seemed a bit deformed.  Now she's looking much better.  Her eyelids are also starting to take shape.

I think it was around this point that I started doing colors from the least stitches to the most.

And one color left to stitch:

That last color is finally in!

Finally, here she is looking quite beautiful:

I was afraid that after doing her face the rest would be rather anti-climatic.  But I'm actually finding I can't wait to see how well her clothing turns out after seeing how well she's looking so far.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 17.69% complete
Pages: 8 of 54 complete
Stitches: 59,873 out of 338,400 complete

I really should put her down and start working on Christmas gifts.  We'll see what I actually end up doing.

Ophelia: Eighth Post - Pages 9 & 10

I kept working on Ophelia, with the promise of her face, I just couldn't stay away.  I decided to stitch both pages 9 and 10 at the same time, as you could probably tell by my post title.  At first it was a little daunting after only doing a page at a time.  However, I did not want to split the two pages because the split went right through her left cheek.  While I cannot see any of the seams between my previous pages I still figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

I did my usual trick of stitching the background first, which really was not all that much.

That big blank area in the middle just reminded me of how much I had decided to take on.

I was going to go through and do some of the dark areas because they were easy to see on the fabric, but I then decided to do the most prominent color on these two pages which was a pink in her face, it made an outline of sorts so next I just filled it in.

And then I just started filling in here and there.  I just did certain colors as I felt like it.  I really don't have any rhyme or reason to which color I do next.  I focused on a few colors in her tiara, then I got bored of that and who knows what color I went to after that.

See those two random pink stitches below her chin?  Those are the only stitches of that color in the entire chart, so... yay, I completed a color!

So now these two pages combined are 52% done.  I'm not quite halfway through page 9, and over halfway through page 10.  Even as I look at this I'm trying to decide what color I'm going to work on next.  I think since it's so late I'm going to work on her tiara a bit.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 15.49% complete
Pages: 6 of 54 complete
Stitches: 52,411 out of 338,400 complete

Ophelia: Seventh Post - Page 4

Well, this page took longer than I anticipated.  I've been adding beads every once in a while on Mermaids of the Deep Blue, so she hasn't received my undivided attention.

So, I decided to go over to page 4, instead of going down to page 9, and finish off the top of her head.

I did the same thing I did with page 3, I did all the background first, which was actually slightly over 80% of the page.

Then the rest of the page, I did say the rest of the top of her head, but it's mostly flowers on the top/side of her head.  I did all of this part of the page this week, I think it took only three nights after I got off from work.

Here she is currently, 6 pages complete.

All that's left on the top row now is a full page and a partial page only 12 columns wide, all of which is just background.  However.... I think she needs a face first, what do you think? ;D

Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 13.34% complete
Pages: 6 of 54 complete
Stitches: 45,143 out of 338,400 complete

Beaded Pluto: First Post

I mentioned a few posts back that I had started working on another beaded project.  This is the piece I designed for Pluto that is similar to the one I made for Chip 'n Dale.

To the right is the image I used to make my pattern.  However, I did not do the extreme shading they did in the image.  I wanted him to look more "old school" like the original animations.

This one is a bit simpler than Chip 'n Dale.  I was thinking of adding a bone in the upper left hand corner as I had added the acorn in Chip 'n' Dale, but I didn't like the way it looked and eventually abandoned that idea.

So I started off with a bang, 41 rows completed.  Granted quite a few of those were only two colors, but still, it was quick.

As of April 21, 2015, 41 Rows

When I started working on Pluto I slowed down a bit.

As of April 28, 2015, 57 Rows

And then I took a break.  And today I worked on a whole bunch.

As of July 7, 2015, 87 Rows

I did 30 rows, completed 2 colors and got most of his head done.

Project Stats:
Pattern: Pluto
Original Artist: Disney
Pattern by: Me
Started Beading: April 21, 2015
Beads: 11/0 Miyuki Delicas
Thread: Silamide
Percentage: 43.06% complete
Rows: 87 of 202 complete
Beads: 4,089 of 9,494 complete

I think I'm going back to working on Ophelia for the rest of the day.  I haven't gotten very far on the new page yet.

Ophelia: Sixth Post - Page 3

I've been waiting for this page, and now it's here / done.

I forced myself to do all the background first.  I figured that would motivate me to get it done faster so I could actually start stitching Ophelia.  I'm not sure how well it worked, but the background colors were 67% of the page, but only 12% of colors.

I finished the background and then was going to take a picture, and I forgot.  So instead this picture has all the background colors and two and half of Ophelia's colors.

I got a ton done the first night I worked on her, I might have stayed up really late.  I just have to show up to work, right, if I'm a zombie from stitching all night, that's acceptable, right? ;D

One interesting fact about this piece, there is no black in it.

So here's pretty much everything except the flowers, there's a few bits missing here and there, but they're mostly in the flowers.  Wait, another pic?  How many am I going to take?  What can I say, I'm actually stitching something other than background and I'm excited!

And I finished up the flowers tonight.

And here she is, finally started with the previous pages so you can, maybe, get a sense of the overall scale.

There are two more full pages and a very partial page left for the top row.


Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 11.11% complete
Pages: 5 of 54 complete
Stitches: 37,600 out of 338,400 complete

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep going to the next page or take a short break and work on Mermaids of the Deep Blue.

Ophelia: Fifth Post - Page 8

I expected to continue with Mermaids of the Deep Blue, but I want to order a different color of bead.  I think what I have would work, but sometimes I can be a bit of a perfectionist, so I want to change it to a closer color.  So I went back to Ophelia.

This time I started on the bottom half of page 8.

Then I finished everything except the colors in the flower:

And finally the flower is in!

Here are all four pages:

I can't wait to get more done so that the flower doesn't look so odd.  It kind of looks like more of the background blob, but once I get the page next to it done, I'm sure it'll look much better

Project Stats:
Pattern: Ophelia
Original Artist: Jonathon Earl Bowser
Pattern by: Heaven and Earth Designs
Started Stitching: August 15, 2009
Restarted Stitching: January 1, 2015
Fabric: 25ct. White Magic Guide
Floss: DMC 1 over 1
Percentage: 8.87% complete
Pages: 4 of 54 complete
Stitches: 30,020 out of 338,400 complete

The top of her head will be visible next.  Lots and LOTS of new colors.  I went through my floss to make sure I had all the colors and had to pick up a few.  I'm sure they're around somewhere, but I just wanted to make sure I had them immediately on hand instead of searching.

I also want to thank everyone still reading my blog and especially those who leave a comment.  I rarely reply to comments, however, I make sure I reply to questions.  I just wanted everyone to know how much I enjoy them and I get excited every time I see a new one.