probably the only cake posting i'll put up

here's a cake i decorated for anne's birthday. took photos of it because i thought it was sort of cute. i used the gel icing decoration that i had left in the house and chocolate candies for the "buds".

from concept to execution

so my friend daena saw the mad embroidery skillz (yo) that i was acquiring. and she commissioned a piece. she wanted something for her bathroom.

so naturally, we went thru google for bathroom poetry and found this gem:

Roses are red, and have thorns that can cut,

so don't ever use them to wipe your bare butt

since i was starting from scratch, i did image searches on flowers, vines, roses... mainly for designs that i felt comfortable embroidering. i found these two images:

and put this together in photoshop:

almost finished!

i wanted the final product to be very "kitchy" - so i wrapped it in a cute little flowered ribbon and voila!

yes. kitchy. that *was* the plan.

a gift i never got to give...

so once i started stitching & had patterns - i wanted to make something with these adorable tiki patterns i had. our friends sarah and greg had a tiki bar in their backyard so i put two and two together! well... right around the time that i made these handtowels, they got rid of the tiki bar because they were moving soon.

so now we've got tiki handtowels in the bathroom. :)

more for noah

here are a few others that i did for him; since these aren't sublime stitching designs i put them as their own post. i find these animals adorable! especially proud of the lil' bug by the frog and the hat on the elephant.

delving into embroidery

so i started to get into embroidery, and i picked up this book. it's got some really fun & cute retro designs. i did this on a plain white t-shirt for the wonderniece.

not sure what is up with this goofy smile:

finally, something sublime!

once i began getting interested in fabric work, i was intrigued by jenny hart & her sublime stitching website. her designs are so fun. the tagline is perfect - "this ain't your gramma's embroidery". i love the concept of sushi on a onesie - kills me from cuteness. altho i've yet to actually put sushi on a onesie. gotta get on that.

here are some of my first projects with jenny's designs - taken from the sexy librarians selection. these are for my friend anne's new baby, my godson.

he was baptized in the onesie with the typewriter. i love my friends.

and why WOULDN'T you put a red swingline on a onesie?

random

a few cross stitch pieces:

(to hang in bedroom)this was originally a holiday themed design that i altered; the top martini glass is supposed to actually be sprigs of holly. i turned it into another martini glass; not too thrilled with how wide the brim is; but i think that the olives are cute. i also added colors of the martinis; the red is representing a cosmo; the one on the right is a choco-tini.

love you, theresa! hope you like the "whatever"!

my christmas gifts from '08

here's what friends and family got from me for christmas last year - magnets! i took different types of paper's designs, ranging from origami paper to sheet music to lyrics from a musical printed out to notecards. i was pretty pleased with the results!

i put a drop of extra strength clear glue onto the paper, then laid down a clear flat marble (the kind that you find in the florist' section to arrange flowers) on top of the glue; the marble sort of magnifies the design under it. i then attached a magnet that i found at a craft store using the same glue. the toughest part of the craft was the drying process; the magnets wanted to stick together, which made for off-kilter magnets in the center of the marbles! luckily i've got a very very very old baking sheet that the magnets stuck to; they kept them from sliding next to each other.

happy holidays!!

i hope that you had a wonderful season!

(should i have censored that?)

it began with cross stitch...

i found these patterns on julie jackson's website subversivecrossstitch.com and finally ordered them. while C and I were on vacation i picked them up and i was a goner. it was pretty fun stitching sarcasm surrounded by bunnies.

it ended up going to my cousin kevin - he's currently going to case western in OH. enjoy, good sir!