Knitty, Stitchy, Sunny...

Yesterday we had one of those miserable rainy weather days all day. I was afraid our amazing hot summer weather was gone for good but hey no! Today, it's back to sunshine again! Yay! So much more uplifting.

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With so many hobbies to maintain I sometimes have a dilemma what to choose. Shall I knit or perhaps shall I stitch or crochet something today? Or maybe should I get my glass paints pots out... or make cards? Decisions, decisions.- we all know it. If I do something like for example I knit, I regret I don't make cards. If I make cards, then I regret I don't practise my crochet skills and so on. Do you know that feeling? So I decided to satisfy my crafting craves and my plans for today are: cards, cards, cards for the 1st half of the day, then yarns and threads and needles combined with late evening telly watching :)

A good cup of tea, jam toasts and yarns/threads will definitely keep me happy today. (Did you know? I have a thing about jam and butter toasts - they have to be cut into triangles :) Dunno why, I just love them that way. My bf introduced me to this idea. It's tasty and kinda... cute. It's a bit of a British thing, I reckon). In the meantime, knitting the Nordic balls is back on track again ( a commission for a colleague) and I'm still cross stitching the tropical bookmark with parrots. 

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Sometimes I like to blog about the crafty stash I have particular liking / attachment to. I'm definitely VERY MUCH attached to stamps, as you can see :) If there are any stampaholics among my readers out there, watch out! I thought I'd share it with you. HeroArts and Basic Grey teamed up to create these wonderful sets of retro stamps. The left-hand set arrived at my door step well over a week ago and the right-hand set came through with the post yesterday. I'm in love with these trendy retro designs! 

When I discovered them I thought of my younger brother straight away. He is kinda "retro" :) He wears glasses (sometimes a moustache too!!!), loves riding a bike and obviously loves music to bits. These stamps will be perfect for his birthday card in December. 

Notice the moustache stamp - so trendy these days and chevrons and arrows. Love 'em all! Great job HeroArts and Basic Grey!

3 Retro Flowers Cross Stitch Cards

Summer is just perfect for stitching floral projects. You can take your embroidery outside, sit in your garden and simply get stitiching with a cold drink next to you. This is exactly what I'm going to do when I'm on my holidays. Speaking of the florals, yesterday I finally finished off my cross stitched retro flowers, ironed them, trimmed them and mounted on the card blanks. It's a freebie from a Cross Stitcher magazine (issue: 267, July 2013). I knew from the very beginning I'd be stitching them! They are just too cute!

The floral designs are gorgeous - my style! and I just love the stripey backgrounds too!

Don't they look nice when 3 together?

Apparently you spend about 3 hrs on stitching each. Think I spent much longer but it was worth it.
Really enjoyed stitching this cross stitch kit. Great choice Cross Stitcher! Thank you! x x

New Baby Cross Stitched Card. A very "stitchy" weekend.

This weekend has been all about cross stitching. Woohoo! Finally, I have finished my cross stitched teddy  and mounted it on a card. I was backstitching it all afternoon yesterday and today I've washed it, ironed it and mounted on the card and embellished the whole thing :) Quite elaborate piece of work considering how many hours have gone into stitching the teddy itself plus how much time I spent today pondering on the card layout and choosing the right stamps! :) Pink gingham paper was a must! - I just love gingham patterns. Cross stitched cards are the most time-consuming types of cards but they are so unique and special in this way. Not bad ;) Pleased with the results.

The card will go to my colleague, who recently has had a baby - gorgeous ginger-haired Millie May. Hope she likes it. 

The cross stitch design comes from Cute Cross Stitch magazine, a newbie on the press market, issue no.1, Spring 2013. The stamps I used to make a tag: Nordic Baby from The Waltzing Mouse Stamps and the punched lacy heart border was made using Martha Stewart punch Heart Border. 

Still on the cross stitch frontline, yesterday a new issue of subscribed Cross Stitcher arrived through the post and since I just loved their added freebie, I started stitching it immediately :) These 3 supa cute retro / folksy flowers are sooooo my style! They will make a set of 3 cross stitched notelets. 

I'm really enjoying stitching them right now!

Speaking of the cute flowers, I have been sooo over the moon when I managed to get hold of these 2 gorgeous sets of stamps:

In a way they are very special for me. These are the stamps by Basic Grey from 2009 - series: Ambrosia Bitsy Bohemia stamps. Very difficult to buy now as they are the retired products. I spotted them being reserved and then bought by someone else in a 2nd hand craft market group on facebook (doh!) and since I'm always on the lookout for the craft products with a unique folky feel, I knew I had to find a set like this for myself too. I scoured the whole internet looking for them and finally some persistent search on ebay made my dream come true :)))) there was one seller in Germany who was still selling them and now I can enjoy card making with these beautiful designs. How lucky I was! My favourites among these sets are naturally the  gorgeous folky butterfly, 2 birds on the branches and a folky medallion with a butterfly inside (two separate stamps).

To finish off with this stampaholic confession, I'm linking up tonight at Hand-made Harbour to do some blog hopping. Hope all you have had a good weekend and enjoyed the last two sunny days. x x

Retro-style tealight votives

I like to paint glass according to whatever takes my fancy :)This is the way I enjoy glass painting best. This time I fancied painting a pair of twin tealight candleholders with a stained-glass effect and some India-inspired colours. The outcome? I guess, they look sort of retro :)
It takes a while to paint this sort of votives due to the large amount of single "cells" to fill up with a paint and the more colours you use, the longer it takes. I painted the outlines freehand first, in stages, turning the glass round and letting it dry before I moved to another section. Then I filled the squares with a selection of  red, orange, pink and yellow glass paint and again, it had to dry in stages. Some squares I painted with a clear medium paint so that the candle light will be a fusion of white natural light and "stained glass" light effects. It does look good in the dark, believe me :)

I put a piece of white paper underneath the votives to show you what colourful shades they create in the sunlight :)