Lessons In Embroidery

Sometimes things fall together - they click and you find yourself in the middle of that "aahaaaa" moment because your busy brain just sorted out/ fetched from the past/ put together info you thought was forgotten from a long time ago. I love these moments. I really do. Because they make me think I am where I'm supposed to be and that feels amazing.

So, what does all of the above have to do with embroidery? It goes like this:

• back in August of 2006 I got 2 incredibly cute little handmade books from Laura whom I met over at deviantArt (one of the little books is made of paper and I use it for addresses of friends I meet on-line and the other little book has pages made of felt and is meant to house sewing needles). She now has her own site and creates beautiful and unique hand embroidered items.
• in August of 2008 my dear friend Katrina surprised me with a small papery suitcase filled with awsomness; lots and lots of different crafting materials which included embroidery threads (or are they called embroidery flosses? the later sounds rather yucky to me as I associate any type of floss with the dental one)
• I have no idea when I bought my embroidery hoop but I know it was in summer and judging from previous two lines probably in August :)
• last year I became really good friends with Toi who not only is a brilliant illustrator and photographer, she also uses embroidery to create her amazing "illustration pieces" (remember Mrs. Fox I made after one of her embroideries?)
• this month Laura decided to start with a series of mini tutorials for which she will prepare all the photos and instructions and they are about.... embroidering of course!

In my mind, this all means it is finally the time for me to give embroidery a proper try. Cool huh? :)



Here are my gathered supplies and you can see all the things I mentioned above. Aren't those little books adorable? The one with a bee will house the needles.

Being Busy

A big sunshiny hello! :)  (finally some sun amongst all that snow)

I've been a bit quiet lately so just in case any of you started wondering what happened to me I am here to assure you I'm doing perfectly well (knocking on wood). I've been busy with all sorts of things; first I kicked my self somewhere and decided to tidy up my desk a bit (the one I usually take photos of my WIP projects on).

Tidying it just wouldn't be enough so I opted for the "wall solution" - meaning getting a rail and containers to move my pencils and stuff there. After one quick Ikea visit (is that even possible? :)) there were 3 white Bygel containers and the rail waiting to be installed.



I knew I'll pretty them up a bit because they were just too plain for me (and beautiful Fintorp containers are a bit too much for my budget right now).

If you'd like to do something similar here are my progress shots and some guidance.



Take double sided tape and put a few strips on the container. Then start wrapping it up with a cord or yarn or whatever you'd like your container to wear in the end. Try to keep your thread as close to each-other as possible - I didn't and you can see how it looks (you can see glue strips between the cords).



Here is how they looked like all wrapped around. Notice how translucency of the containers messes everything up? Well, if you do this on a non translucent material the container looks gorgeous at this step. But if this happens, you need to use some color. I colored everything with white acrylic - inside and outside - to remove the see-through mess.



And voila, much much better after all is clear and white :)


I wanted to add some colors to the containers maybe even do some napkin decoupage on them but I just didn't have enough time so they shall stay like this for a while. I also plan on doing a little shelf to put above them but that will go on my to-do list as well.

I know there are still things on the desk but at least I can work on bigger scale papers now. 


The second thing that is keeping me busy is helping my friends to put up web page for their climbing holds. Photographing all of the holds took a whole day and now I need to process and pretty all of those photos up. I tried to work on my web page as well but it's so much easier to help others that it's going back on my to-do list for the time being :)


I'd also like to invite you to join us in a group I created on FB for drawing along the book called "Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists". I've had this book for so long and completed none of the assignments from it that I needed to take some serious action. We shall take 2 weeks for each assignment starting on April the 1st.

I have one more thing to tell you but I'll write a new post just for that :D  As soon as possible of course.

I wish you a bright and happy day!

Receiving Week

I haven't been creatively active for the past two weeks now and I must say this fact is making me quite miserable. I really hope I'll get back into my flow soon. Very soon :)

But I do have happy things to tell about.

First, out of nowhere, I got this beautiful envelope in my real mail box:



Inside, there was this gorgeously drawn house, drawn and sent to me by Esther from Netherlands. Esther is my online friend that I met through e-course I participated in last year - Creative Courage. She has her blog named Esther is drawing and is a very creative person too :) Just look at her house:



I have yet to come up with the idea about what to send back to her but I'll get it. I know I will :D


The second thing that came to me was the mail I was anxiously waiting for ever since I sent my little sketchbook back to Brooklyn. It is now part of digital library for The Sketchbook Project 2013 and you can browse through it's pages RIGHT HERE..



I kept it a secret for so long because I wanted to surprise my dear sweet friend Toi who made and sent Lavlav to me. He was my big inspiration for the book and still continues to put a smile on my face every time I look at him.

Please leave a comment on my book if you like it, it would mean a world to me.