Theme-Tas-Stitch August link up post

Hello Friends,

We last left our intrepid stitcher on a quest to complete all the full crosses on Giraffe silhouette and wondering...

If the 900 ish stitches on the tree would be a stitch to far?
If the quarter stitches would be a fraction too much?
If the 3 shades at the bottom would brown our intrepid stitcher off?

August Gifted Gorgeousness

Hello, 

It's a lovely sunny afternoon here and we're having a lazy day. I have to do some planning work to do in a bit for church but hopefully it should just be typing up so won't take me long and I can enjoy a bit of crafting this afternoon. 

So on to gifted gorgeousness, Jo at Serendipitous Stitching runs a monthly SAL that I'm hopeless at keeping up with to share things that are made for gifts or using stuff gifted to us. I've three things to show you this time as I shall save my travelling box makes for my next  couple of posts. First are two you have seen and we're both birthday presents

A spot of tea by dragon dreams, stitched for Laura at Strawberry Mouse Crafts

So this ticks a lot of boxes as it was a kit that was gifted, I swapped out the plain white aida for some hand dyed linen from Steph at Show and Tell and given as a gift to my friend Amanda. 

The next one is new! I'm stitching this for my friend Caroline's birthday. The design is from an old cross stitcher. I call Caroline 'queen of hearts' as she is always sewing hearts, so I searched on Pinterest and found this design called queen of hearts. I had the issue deep in my magazine pile so here is my progress so far. I'm loving the design and I'm stitching it in a dinky dyes thread called Aussie Jewels. I'm hoping I have enough thread as I can't find a supplier in the UK of dinky dyes. 

And a bit of a close up

So that's the news, travelling box posts to come! 

Happy Sunday! 

Odds n ends, Laura's birthday, Bessie and Star

Hello friends,

I hope you all are having a lovely weekend. It's been a mixed weekend for us so far. I had a lovely meal with lots of friends from church last night to hear about a project that one of our Interns is going to be doing for the next year at least. Jennie is going to live in Northern Thailand and work in a Childrens home called Kid's Life. The story of the home is amazing and Jennie loves to do creative projects with them and one of the ideas is to make charm bracelets with the girls. They have a creativity hut that aims to teach skills to the children. I will be making up a parcel of beads and findings to send out with Jennie when she goes in August, If anyone would like to pass on any unwanted beads, I'd love to be able to add them to the parcel.

Here goes with the weeks creativity... I made up the Dragon for Hubby


Dragon wall hanging

Hubby has also been making things himself and made a couple of cool beaded wristbands. Here is the first one he made. 

Hubby's beaded wristband

I got asked a few weeks ago to do a jewellery party for a friends daughter's 9th birthday. It was loads of fun to do. The girls did really well and made some very pretty necklaces and bracelets. I didn't take any photos, but I'd love to do another party like that.



As many of my blog readers will also read Laura's blog too, they will know she celebrated her birthday last week and here is the parcel of goodies I sent her.

My son came up with the idea of this little mouse, he picked the colours and the ribbon and helped to stuff it too. The lilac bag contains a bronzed earrings,necklace and bracelet. The blue bag a little stretchy bracelet made by Thomas using indian glass beads. I also made Laura a needle felted Russian doll keyring.
(sorry the picture is a little fuzzy).

I also made Laura a biscornu using a pattern from here. I found a little coloured dragonfly charm in my stash that was perfect.

And here is the bottom...

Here is the card, A blackwork design I first saw on Pinterest and downloaded from here

As usual I added a few bits to the box including a bag of charms that kind of represented Laura including Harry Potter ones, Medieval, sewing and some ones that I just liked! There were also bags of beads.

I also popped in the bottom a couple of bits and bobs I'd picked up over a few weeks. I love the London bus stress ball.

I have one more picture to share today that is in memory of my Mum's dog Star who died today.



And his sister Bessie who died a year ago this month too.



Sorry to end on a sad note but they were much loved but both lived to grand ages of 16 and 15 respectively. My next blog post will all be about the travelling craft box that will be departing my house this week to head north to Lori!

Thanks for reading my very, very long post. Much love to you all. xx

June ATC's and Wedding Anniversary presents

Hi Everyone,
Weeks have passed again since my last post and no doubt with the amount of crafting I'm doing at the moment there will be a few more to come over the next week or so.

The travelling craft box arrived with me last week (SQUEEEEEEL!) So I'm having a mad making session. I've made about 6 things so far with another half a dozen in the pipeline. Here's a quick peep at some of the amazing items. I've got my eye on 11 items and it works out that I can have at least one item from everyone taking part which is brilliant.

So more about the travelling box in a couple of weeks when it has landed on Lori's doorstep. I actually managed to take part in one of the ATC swaps this month, I will post a pic of my ATC's when I can work out how to get them off my phone, But here are the ones I've received. The themes were transport and Great Britain.

Hubby and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary last week and here is my present to him. It was meant for a card but as it was 2am when I finished it the night before I gave him the option of what I should do with it. I had the idea of doing it bell pull style. I just need to run it up on the machine when I have 10 mins. The design was from travel the world in cross stitch.

Here is my present from Hubby...I lost my favourite scissors so hubby kindly brought me a replacement. I also had a needle felting pen to speed up my work and a pulled thread book as I'm doing my first piece at the moment and really enjoying it. This Anchor series of books is so good, I'd love the freestyle embroidery one too.

Well back to watching the tennis and half hour of stitching whilst DD finishes her nap. Postie has just been with something rather special for her, which I will share tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by. xx