Dragonfly Boudoir Box

I DID IT. I DID IT. I DID IT. I DID IT. I DID IT.

Please imagine myself jumping up and down here, wiggling my butt like crazy, making weird sounds and you'll receive a pretty realistic picture of my state of mind right now. What mind btw?

I DID IT (or did I say that already???). And phew, that was quite a bit work involved.

Making a box like this from scratch is not too difficult when following precisely the directions as given by Judy Odell, but it surely is quite work intensive. Because I had to learn couple of new things - like the ladder stitch and how to use my newest bestest friend the curved needle AND because I was afraid to screw it up, it took a bit longer then expected. In the end I'm very happy I finally kicked myself in the butt and did it.

And in reality the box looks even better then on the pictures.
I am SOOOOO happy right now.

And did I say "when following the directions ...blabla?" Of course I didn't. As my husband would say: she never follows any directions - why do you think she would do now?
I followed the directions word for word until almost the end. But then I thought, stuff it, I'll do it my way. Now...I can assure you, if Judy Odell tells you to lace then you do NOT glue. At least not if you don't want to screw up. I glued the fabric of the lid, and the glue was clearly visible. It caused me quite a bit work to get it nicely fixed. There is no glue visible anymore, but next time I follow Judy's directions to the T (I think...lol)

Ohhh....and I'll start this month another Chatelaine project. Here is a picture of the Hanging Garden of Semiramis, and I mounted that picture on my chosen fabric

A finish and a change

First of all, I finished the stitching and beading on the Dragonfly Boudoir Box, which is another Chatelaine Design. Now I have to follow the instructions and put together a box. Which is a bit work also. The instructions are written by Judy Odell, THE master of finishing in my opinion, so that shouldn't be too bad. Still quite an amount of steps to follow though. But what makes me nervous is ....you can't make any faults. Period. And it's stitched with silk, there is quite some value involved. What if I DO make a fault???? Today I can't start, I need first to find a nice backing material (phew...lol. But anyway, I'll have to give it a go, and will post a picture if succeeded. If I don't, I'll simply drop the subject...lol.

Outback Gum by Fiona Jude

Another thing to tell is that since my last blog entry I found out that the real name of the piece I'm stitching is not "Coming to Life" but "Coming to Water" and thankfully I finally found also the artist who painted this beautiful piece of art. He is called Bo Newell. I looked up his art, and he is a great artist. His work is just lovely.
Now I have to change all pictures into "Coming to Water".


The little chart I offered last time will go to Courtney, or better said, her daughter. I think that's the perfect solution for that little kit.
And there was a big surprise for me as well. I told you that the main reason for me buying that grab bag was that it said "Fiona Jude kit". And guess what. Fiona Jude herself visited my blog, was not a happy camper that a kit she created for children and for that shop got put in a grab bag where it fooled people like me. She offered to give me something else for it. Which is so nice of her. And she gave me a link to her website. Gosh that got me into drooling mode. Plus, that she has a very nice service on her website. You can order any of her kits also directly from her with linen instead of Aida. I showed Mike couple of the designs and he really liked them a lot too. Chances are that he gets me one of these kits for my next birthday. Which will take a while, but ....lol....but I have already so much kitted up here that that doesn't matter.

Anyway, back to the email with Fiona Jude. After I thanked her for visiting my blog and her kind offer, I told her that I can't send the kit back to her because I offered it on my blog and it seemed only fair to send her that little kit to Courtney's daughter. Besides, by doing so the kit will go exactly there where it was meant to be: to a child who is interested in learning cross stitch. Perfect solution.


Anyway, here some pictures of Fiona Jude's work. Then you can see why I'm such a fan of her work. The pictures are clickable and go to her website. There are so much more pictures on her website. Most beautiful birds and other Australian animals (I stitched the Eastern Rosellas already), beautiful Australian flowers, and of course the landscapes. She is a great designer, and quite well known in Australia.

If you think her kits are expensive, then it is because it's Australian dollars. When converted to US dollars, its way cheaper. 40 Australian $ are about 25 US.

The first picture looks a lot like the areas we hike regularly.

Mountain Ranges by Fiona Jude

Hawaiian Mandala - FINISHED

This month the last part of the Hawaiian Mandala got released. There were three little creatures to stitch in each corner. These got stitched over one, which makes them look very detailed. And in each corner there was a turtle - completely beaded - swimming in shimmering water (braid)

The stitching was already done for a while, but there was a surprise. You have to determine yourself which type of crystal you want to have for the middle of the beaded turtles. And for someone like me that isn't that easy....lol. I'm a quite visual type. I need to SEE.

Soooooo....I grabbed my collection of Swarovski Crystals to form a first opinion and then ordered several Swarovski pearls and crystals. When trying these out I knew immediately which one I want...but in a different size!!! Today the ordered pearls arrived and I could finally finish this mandala. I chose in the end Swarovski pears, 6mm in the color "Tahitian"

I have to take a better picture still...but that comes later. Soon I'll bring it anyway to the framer.

For people who are planning to stitch this mandala as well ... I made several example pictures of the turtle with different pearls/crystals. There are so much more choices, but it might give you an idea about light/dark colors, size and form. I uploaded them all to my Webshot album here

I would love to go on stitching on the Dragonfly Boudoir box, but the foot of my magnifier broke, and I'm not able to stitch on black without that. That has to wait until Mike finds the time to fix it, which might take some time. Oh well, good thing is that it won't run away.

Dragonfly Boudoir Box

This month I started another design from Chatelaine Designs: The Dragonfly Boudoir Casket. It's one of the designs from the so called Designing Ladies. Judy Odell designed and charted the box, and several designers came up with a design for that box. Next to subscribing to the yahoo group from Chatelaine Designs, I also purchased the finishing instructions from Judy Odell.

And I'm impressed about the quality of these instructions. Very detailed. I love it. Judy Odell just published a booklet for several different finishes, and I'm planning to buy this one too. My finishing skills will probably get a good boost from that. And I can surely use that...lol Did you know that Judy Odell is the person who originally invented the flat fold. These days it's a common finishing used by lots of people, and it seems forgotten that Judy invented it couple of years ago.

Anyway, here are couple of pictures of my upcoming Dragonfly Boudoir Box. I'm at the moment busy with the 4 sides. Beads and crystals will be added when all stitching is finished.

First long side



One of the small sides



Second long side

I did change the letters a bit here, the original ones were harder to identify as G and L. I hope with these changes it's a bit easier


Here you can see all 4 sides together. Above there are 4 beads attached. I did that to see how the color changes when I use black Nymo instead of white to attach them. And I have to admit that the color of the beads doesn't improve with black Nymo. I'll do it or with white Nymo or invisible thread (which I deeply dislike...lol)

What else on the stitching front:

My floss tag for another exchange got sent off....and can you imagine, I completely forgot to take a picture. Dohh!!! I really hope that the recipient will provide me with a picture of front and back.

And I stitched and finished a Christmas ornament for another exchange. This will get send off to it's new home begin next month. No picture until it arrives there.


Ohhh....and Michael and I took the opportunity for couple of long hikes. At the moment we're visiting the old Gold Mines here around. And we're totally in awe how these people got the heavy equipment to the mines. You have to climb and hike, and even our dogs are broken afterwards, and only thing we had to carry were backpacks. Can you imagine getting heavy machinery there? Carrying around stones? Steep hills up and down? It's amazing.

Here you can see Mike taking a picture of an oven. This oven was used to create steam for the stamper in order to crush the stones. They then added some chemicals to it which would bind the gold.

And here you can see what the experts think of having a day of hiking

Update on Hawaiian Mandala

The last week I'm only stitching on part 10 of the Hawaiian Mandala. This month it's quite a lot of stitching. Right now I'm busy with the second corner...and when that is finished there will be 2 more corners to go. I will be glad when part 10 is finished.

I did change the orange flowers and their stems. Originally it is meant to be in Thread Gatherer Silk n Colors 175 (Straw into Gold). But that blended right into the fabric and became quite invisible. The stems are now a blend of SnC 175 and SnC 172 (Gingersnap) and the flowers are done with DMC 722.

After finishing part 10...or in between...there is a floss tag hanger to stitch for an exchange and I subscribed for another Christmas ornament exchange as well and I'm looking forward to stitching these smalls pretty much. :)

Alpine Season Garden - Finished

Finally it's finished. After I changed the bead colors I thought I would run out of white beads. To my upper surprise there were JUST enough beads to finish it. What a luck...but then I ran out of svarowski crystals...lol. I ordered a bead packet and it stated it had 24 of that color, but it were only 20 of them. That was a bit of a bummer. So I ordered couple of them from an Australian seller instead of going back to Cindy from the European X Stich Company. She would have sent the missing beads at her cost, that's without a doubt. But I figured it would first of all take around 2 weeks before I would have the missing crystals, and secondly sending 4 beads from the United States is a bit over the top. So I let that pass and simply bought them myself.
Anyway, the beads arrived today and it's finished.

Isn't it funny somehow. You're busy with stitching, looking forward to finish it. Then you finally finish it, are all happy about it.....open the draw and put it in. Done. Although, I do plan to get this one framed. Soon...I think. LOL...I just realize that I said that about the Kookaburras I stitched last year too, and then it took almost a year before we brought it to the framer. On the bright site: if you wait quite a while before you bring it to the framer, you'll get again that "happy dance" feeling after framing.



Right now I fill my evenings with stitching at the "Queen of the Needle". Also in the start blocks is a small work to be finished as a floss tag for an exchange, another big Mandala, 2 boxes, and my husband is waiting for me to start his favorite - an African painting called "Coming to Life".

Grey flowers?

This is the very first time something like this happens to me. Not the first time I'm stuck...lol...that does feel slightly familiar. But the reason for it is new. First time ever I really dislike a choice of a designer. The Alpine Season Garden has in each corner a flower that is completely beaded. The flower itself is dark grey!!! And I'm not really thrilled about that. To be sure I beaded one completely, because you never know how it really will look until you see it. At least that is how it works with me.

After that I was yesterday busy for quite a while trying to figure out with what to replace the grey. In the end I settled for a white color that is used in the design as well and left the second bloom color as it was. That is a transparent color with a blue-ish shimmer. Problem was...once finished the blue-ish bead looks grey as well. For now I think I concentrate on the edge, and have a look then into a light pink to replace the second color as well. The greens of the stem I leave as they are. This means I'll have to redo both flowers...lol. Oh well, keeps me off the street doesn't it? NO...it doesn't. It's today a beautiful day...I'll finish this post grab the dogs and drive to the bush to have a nice walk. That beading can come later. I won't be able to finish the beading anyway this weekend. I'm pretty sure I need to order in at least one color...probably two. I'll see how it goes, may be I'll have JUST enough beads.

Here is a picture of both beaded flowers



And here from each flower a close up

Update on Alpine Garden

IT'S DONE....IT'S DONE....IT'S DONE. The stitching is...not the beading though. But for now I don't care...I'm too busy here with my happy dance. All stitching done. Right now I'm sooooo happy that I "finished" it. Tomorrow the truth will hit me probably that this piece is far from finished, but today I don't go there. Today it feels as if I have finished "something".

Besides, at the moment I don't want even to try to figure out how long it will take to put 1556 beads and couple of swarovski chrystals on it. It sounds a lot. I'll see how it goes. Can't hide from that anyway if I want to get this piece over and done with.

Ohh...and the picture looks a bit crook because it's hanging on the floor frame and the heater started to blow. (meaning I didn't have the patience to wait until the heater was done)

Hawaiian Mandala

One of my favorite designers is Martina Weber from Chatelaine Designs. At the moment I'm stitching 2 of her designs. The Hawaiian Garden Mandala get released in 12 parts. Normally the new part gets released begin of each month. Because of taking a vacation Martina released this month the part for August earlier. This evening I finished it - and it will now get rolled up until begin of September.

Here is a close up of part 9:



And here how the mandala looks part 1 to 9: