The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady (1)

Summertime is this time of year when we all appreciate surrounding us Mother nature more than usual - trips to parks, forests, meadows, walking in valleys, we all have done it... I missed some summery floral themes in my crafting so when a magazine subscription came through with this poppy cross stitch kit I wished to stitch it straight away. This is a freebie stitch kit from the World of Cross Stitching (issue: 206, 2013). The redness of the poppy is so striking and tempting that I couldn't resist making this eclectic floral card. 

There were a few shades of red to use for this poppy. It took me about 3 or 4 stitching sessions to complete it. How I managed to avoid a mistake with this frequent colour changes, I don't know but as I was backstitching all shades agreed perfectly well with the chart. Proud of myself! :) So, dear reader, if you cross stitch yourself, you will know what I mean ;)

I'm really pleased with this stitch and the mounting. The redness of the flower contrasts nicely with the pastel aqua background sprinkled with butterflies. Very eclectic, romantic and feminine at the same time :)

This little cross stitch kit belongs to a product line called The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady - inspired by a book of Edith Holden with the same title. I had a good look in my craft boxes and it turned out that over time I've collected quite a few of such kits. I just put them away hoping I'll stitch them in the future. Perhaps now it's time to bring them out :) They all remind me of old botanical books and herbaria.

I even found a set of card making papers and tags with this theme :) (My goodness! How much stuff I've got squirrelled away!)

Sounds like I'll be making some botanical stuff in the near future! 

In the meantime I'm working on a tropical bookmark from Cross Stitcher. This one is quick and easy to stitch. 

Linking to Hand-made Monday tonight! Do join in! Thank you for your visits and kind comments. xXx

I have a thing...

Now with so many holidays days to go and plenty of free time, I shall be treating you to my frequent blog posts. Be prepared :) 

Have I ever mentioned my new crafty fascination? Foxes... cute ginger foxes :) Today my awaited wooden Hero Arts stamp with a fox came through with the post to join up my other ordered polymer stamp. That naturally made me very happy as I'm looking forward to card making with these foxy stamps :) I even dug out a cross stitch kit with this supa cute forest critter. To be stiched very soon!

Two different stamps, two different images, one animal cuteness...

And when I saw at Tesco magazine shelf this one ... I melted away under this foxy knitted coziness!

This is a great issue of Let's Get Crafting: Knitting and Crochet - not only it's full of summer projects bursting with energizing colours but it also contains a lovely set of yarns and a set of cosy bamboo needles. I will obviously be trying to knit this fox cushion in the future (need to familiarize myself with the intarsia technique first) but there are also other fabulous coasters and mug cozies in this issue I'd love to be able to knit / crochet. If you wish to make similar projects, well, get your hands on this issue quickly - it's so nice that it will surely be flying off the shop shelves. 

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And a quick update on my current cross stitch project. The poppy flower is growing and finally getting some shades and shape. It's only a stitched motif for a card but it's incredible how much time it takes to complete. It must be that shading of red that makes me switch between the colours shades non stop. Been working on it for two days intensively and yet there's plenty of backstitch to do.

The striking redness of a poppy is very rewarding though :) It should be ready very soon!

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Update on the royal events: Yes, the royal baby is with us now. Born yesterday afternoon at 16.24 London time. Above all, congratulations to mummy and daddy - Kate and Wills and also to the whole Royal clan on their baby boy :) He will probably be a future king of Britain and hopefully I will live long enough to see it :) The whole British nation has gone baby crazy and is awaiting now for the royal couple to emerge from the hospital and for the baby's name to be officially revealed. I'm on my viewer seat, my telly is on... :)

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Trixi & Mii Stitch - welcome my new followers 

Floral Cards (2)

Hi all.

Here are some more of my floral greeting cards made using a card making pack from Let's Get Crafting Magazine. The papers, chipboards and stickers were all co-ordinated in style and colours. I really enjoyed making those cards. I had an opportunity to use some of scrapbooking toys too! :)

Daisies and poppies. This is a card of a big format - A4 size when unfolded  - good for grannies and granddads as you can write your wishes in a very huge font :))))

I really like this card - pleased how the layered card topper turned out with different textures plus the yellow, red and white colours look nice together - cheery and optimistic.

Next, the purple-blue gingham patchwork :) I used some of my extras to add to this card - the doily punch, gingham ribbon and tiny gems.

And another gingham patchwork but in a pink version :) Again, a few extra elements added to the card. I like a bit of a gem sparkle but not too much :)

More floral cards to come soon!  I currently jumped briefly to my cross stitch and been stitching motifs for 3 cute cards :)

Hope you have a good sunny weekend :)

lovely Hand-made Monday blog hop - click here!

Floral Cards (1)

I've had a card making pack from Let's Get Crafting magazine that has been in my crafty stash for some time now and it never actually had a chance to see the daylight. I dug it out and recently I've just been card making. Quite intensely, I'd say - I ended up with the 21 new cards :))) Yay! Before that I'd set myself a challenge - to use up all card pack elements and create as many cards as I could. I just needed to make some fresh greeting cards for the oncoming occasions plus I wanted to restock my box with some spare greeting cards, which I like to use whenever something crops up.

These are the first two floral cards - I made for 2 female colleagues at work. One has gone on her secondment, the other one has just retired.

These floral cards are a thematic follow-up to the yellow floral card from this post.

I love poppies - their redness is always so vibrant and they feature on each card so gracefully :) Quite pleased with this red-yellow poppy card. I used a Spellbinders ornate frame die and some red and white relief paste for the 3D dotes all around it. I've been in love with the fish tails recently - they are so trendy! - so I couldn't resist tucking under some fish tailed ribbon!

For the retiring lady I made a green card with a big daisy flower card topper. Daisies are such positive and cheerful flowers popping out on the lawns everywhere :)

Some Spellbinders shapes layered here and embellished the the white relief paste.

And the stamped badge implies it's about time to retire and put the feet up :)

More floral cards to follow soon! :) This is just the tip of the iceberg!
Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving comments. I cherish them! x x

Crafting away...

Would it be a cliche if I said I love my holidays and I'm the lucky one to have proper school holidays. It's the only time when I can craft freely without worrying that I have to go to bed early enough or will run out of time to finish the project or simply be disturbed by anything. Precious enjoyable time! So... For the past week I'd been doing all sorts of crafting - knitting, cross stitching and cardmaking - in other words, whatever takes my fancy :) Here is what I have been up to...

Featuring for the first time on my blog is my Scandinavian-style cross stitched sampler with reindeer :) Yes, yes, I simply couldn't resist not stitching something Nordic this year. I feel this is beginning to set up as a tradition now - a Scandinavia inspired hand-made creation made each year! I'm so in love with this Scandi style that I'd probably feel guilty if I didn't make any! The inspiration for my sampler comes from one of my last year cross stitched cards from this post. You can guess easily which one from :) On this colour of aida the white "chalky" cross stitch against the dark inky blue background  feels... very wintery and cold as if it was at deep dark midnight, don't you think so? :)

I must admit I love stitching sampler elements - hearts, snowflakes and above all those great folky reindeer :) They are such fun to stitch and you don't have to worry about changing the threads. This is a great thing about monochromatic samplers. It feels great to see how by adding an element each time you see your sampler building up. 

This is as much as I have stitched so far - the middle part has been finished and currently I'm working on the upper decorative band. As the last thing I'll be stitching the bottom part. For the photo I took the sampler off the frame to show you what it looks like in its full size :)

For my cross stitched cards - well, I've finished stitching the three festive motifs and started the 4th one. Added some backstitch for the finish too. Then on Saturday a disaster struck - a standing nearby table unexpectedly folded in under the weight of stuff lying on it and the whole mug of hot (!!!) tea went down pouring all over me and some drops of tea also stained my stitches. Argh! I immediately ran with the stitches to soak them in Vanish and the stains, thank God, disappeared. This is what they look like after drying up - all the helpful grid marks disappeared. Never mind, I can put up with that as long as the stains are gone! It was a blessing in disguise, I'd say, 'cause the tea stained mostly the edges of the aida, which will be cut off anyway when I put the stitches in the aperture cards. This is a good lesson for the future. No drinks anywhere near my stitching! 

Overall, happy ending! Phew!

Recently I've subscribed to a Cross Stitch Gold magazine. As a gift the publishing company sent me this lovely cross stitch kit with clifftop poppies. I thought I'd show it to you. Poppies are so trendy to stitch these days! However this kit will have to wait for a more convenient moment in the future as currently I'm busy with my Christmas stuff! 

More on the cross stitch kit theme - my recent purchase from Stitch Direct- Yuletide Reindeer Stocking :) - the cross stitch kit I've been wanting for months and finally is mine! Simple, folky, Scandinavian and with reindeer - just as I like it! I'll be stitching it as soon as I've finished my white-on-blue sampler.

The sampler details are great - Scandinavian poinsettias, geometric floral designs, snowflakes, Christmas trees and forest animals :) This is what makes a Nordic look!

On the knitting front, I've knitted 10 more "skins" and they are waiting in my knitting bag to be steamed and stuffed :) I take such relaxing pleasure in knitting them that I delay finishing them off. I promise myself I'll sort them out by the end of this week :)

Well, I think I'll stop here. There is more stuff to show but I don't want to make this post too long to read through :P Keep dropping by!

Poppy vase

This is a small poppy vase I painted on a colleague's request from her own glass painting kit :) The poppy pattern was included in the glass painting kit and so was the relief outliner. I used my own paints tho. Not sure about you but I like to see this bloody red being embraced by a golden outliner and contrasting nicely with a transparent green. What do you think, huh?

 

Clicking through the internet pages I've come across Wordle - an online applet to create your own word clouds. I love languages so I couldn't resist it :D Here is my tag cloud done for my hobby no.1 - glass painting :)