December Gifted Gorgeousness SAL

Hi Stunners!

Sorry this is soooooo late, but Christmas Chaos ensued and I got totally lost in it. 

In saying that I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, and for those of you lucky enough to have some time off..ENJOY!!! 

Just a short and sweet post today. I have a FINISH!! Okay before we break open the champas it's only a tiny one. This is my Elf Wine Apron that I made for a friend in the US. And it is only my second finish of the year. Yes it's been a bad year in stitches for this so called Crafty Princess.

I also finished page 2 of Arwen by Paine Free Crafts. And the little sparkling piggy needle minder was a gift from my awesome friend, Sharine of Charbella Stitching. So technically, I know it's tenuous this one counts for the GG SAL. Giggle.

2016 has been a tragic year. We have lost so many great souls, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Anton Yelchin, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and now this morning I found out that Debbie Reynolds passed away.

I am so grateful that this year is almost over. 

And to all my icons still alive, please stay safe and no more drugs, I can't take another loss. 

I am looking very forward to 2017 and I hope to be a better blogger, person, Princess and friend. Have a fantastic time in your New Year Celebrations.  I will see you all again in 2017. Take care my beautiful and talented friends, and remember Unicorns are real! 

xoxo Alicia

Gifted Gorgeousness SAL November

Hi stunners!!!

I'm really really really late with this one, sorry about that. I have a new start (what a surprise LOL) which is a gift for my girlfriend whose doggie April went blind literally overnight. She is a Silky Terrier and looks exactly like this chart ,as her mummy Janine always has a bow in her hair. I won't be stitching the prayer as she totally doesn't have a "firm" hand. This doggie was spoilt rotten even before she became blind.  But I'll make something up to put on it, that's a tad more relevant. 

I'm stitching it on 18ct Pink Swirl sparkly fabby from Sew it All Australia. You can just make out the eye. It's weird for me to stitch like this, without gridding and parking, just following the colours in an area, but I kinda like it too. 

And an update for SS Max Colours Butterfly Ball, which was a RAK chart from my dazzling friend Nina. I finished page 18, finally. Woo Hoo. Wickedly mad crazy confetti but I loved it.

And I joined a facebook Group called "The Ultimate Cross Stitch Group" as one of my friends told me that they had lots of challenges. And I stitch so much more when involved in challenges and events. It's the stitching athlete in me ha ha. So I managed a page finish and I am two thirds of the way through my new start which I will show you next post....but the best thing is I received 4 awards and a merit badge. So cool! If you guys are on fb, it's a great group and they are super duper nice there. 

That's all stunners. Hope you are all doing really well and that life is magical.

Take care. 

xox Alicia

P.S. Jo - Serendipitous Stitching if you read this post can you add the linky thingy. I can't get it to work. That is if the linky thingy hasn't closed. Sorry I'm so late. Thanks stunner! 

Halloween Blog Hop

Hi stunners


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This is my first Halloween Blog Hop. It is being hosted by our wickedly cool Coven Leader Jo from the famous Serendipitous Stitching blog. Click on the link if you want to check out the blog hop and discover the Spooky Phrase...bwah ha ha haaahhh!

I have always been a fan of The Addams Family, so I am paying tribute to Halloween 2016 with an Addams Family stitch from The Little Stitcher shop on Etsy.

My deadly contribution so far!

Here is a snippet from one of my favourite moments of this wonderfully macabre family.

Morticia: When we first met years ago, it was an evening much like this. Magic in the air. A boy.

Gomez: A girl.

Morticia: An open grave. It was my first funeral.

Gomez: You were so beautiful. Pale and mysterious. No one even looked at the corpse.

My letter is:

Now onto http://stitchbitch.blogspot.com/ to acquire the next letter

Enjoy your treats and beware of the tricks!

October IHSW & Gifted Gorgeousness

Hi Stunners!

Firstly, thank you all for your lovely comments and congrats on clearing out the craft room. I will post pics for those of you that inquired. But an organised craft room does not necessarily mean tidy craft room LOL, well for me anyway. I'm in the process of putting up my Unicorn pics so I will post some pics of my efforts in the next post which will be my October accomplishments. 

Once again I'm going to smoosh the GG and IHSW posts together as they both finished on the 15th October.

I was supposed to have the whole weekend off with nothing planned but stitching. But of course life sees this, and then decides how can I mess this up for her. So due to an unexpected family visit,  I IHSWed on Saturday night and Sunday.

Progress on Supersized Butterfly Ball Max Colours

This is where I was at on the 15th September

This is my progress for Gifted Gorgeousness before the IHSW weekend. Page 1 completed. 

(I actually had another row completed before the weekend but I forgot to take a before photo...sorry)

And I stitched like a demon for 1 day and night to try and get 7350 stitches for the HAED FB challenge #3. I just made it with 40 mins to go. BOOM! So the IHSW was a godsend. Thanks Joysze! 

And here is the chart that we were rewarded with for completing the challenge. I won't be stitching it as I have the full chart in the Supersized and Max Colours version, of which the material pack arrived yesterday - WOO HOO - New start coming soon!!! 

All good though, I didn't stitch like a mad woman for the reward, it was just as rewarding to make it in time. I failed on Challenge #2 so I felt a little redeemed LOL!

Gifted Gorgeousness aka the unlimited kindness of my amazing friends! 

This week I was the happy recipient of 2 craft parcels that were sent by Nina and Sharine. They were totally unexpected and absolutely appreciated. I admit I squealed like a child when I opened them. But then let's face it...right stunners ha ha

This is a gorgeous needle-minder from Charting Creations that the equally if not more gorgeous Sharine sent me.  Lookie it's pink and blingy and I was born in the Year of the Pig. Perfect choice Sharine. Thank you so much!

And Sharine has an uncanny knack for finding the best cards. Isn't he wicked cool? 

Nina sent me rainbow goodies. I love the socks and the eraser for my big mistakes ha ha. You're the best Nina, thank you so much. There was a big swirl lollipop but that is on the inside of my belly now. Yummy :P

And apologies to my friend Kim, I forgot to mention in the July  GG, which was also my birthday gifts expose.. Kim RAKd me another Hatter chart. As you may or may not be aware but I collect Hatter charts. I just love this guy. So this one is "Hatter" from Colour Cascade Designs. Thank you so much Kim you lil sweetheart.

So if you're interested or love the Mad Hatter here is my current collection. 

Kaelyn asked about the cross stitching app that I use. It's called X-Stitch App and I got it from the Playstore. But it's available for apple users as well. 

Here are a few screen shots. It's awesome I love it. Now there will be no more upending the entire craft room to find something as I have marked on the app where they are being stored. 

And can keep track of all my floss stash too. There are a whole heap of floss makers on the app and she keeps adding more all the time. If you have one that's not on the app just let her know and she will add it. 

That's it for me my lovely stitch friends. I hope life is being magical to all of you. I'm off to check out all your blogs now. I have 7 hours and 45 mins left of my nightshift so I should get through them all and if I'm lucky get a bit of stitching in. I have a new start but I will show you that next post.

Love you all. Take care of yourselves

xo Alicia

Gifted and IHSW September

Hi Stunners!!!

This months Gifted Gorgesousness SAL and IHSW were so close I thought it would be more prudent to moosh them into one post.  

This months GG is Supersized Butterfly Ball Max Colours by Aimee Stewart from HAED. My months progress on this crazy confetti piece. The chart was a gift from my lovely friend Nina. 

And for the IHSW weekend I managed to finish the row. THis puts me at the halfway point for the HAED challenge #3. It's the large format chart so to qualify I have to stitch just under 1 and a half pages. It's pretty slow going with all the colour changes but well worth if for the detail. I've decided to go down the chart instead of across as I just can't face another page of confetti yellow/browns.  So the next colour coming up is a beautiful lavender shade on the tree. 

As you can see I have a ways to go yet. But I can't wait till I reach the fairies! 

I'll be continuing with this one till the next GG or at least till I finish the challenge, the deadline coincidentally is Oct 15th so just in time for GG SAL. 

Those of you lucky enough LOL to be friends with me on fb know that I have recently overhauled the craft room. Thanks to Rai Rai's group craft storage ideas, I was inspired to tackle this problem.

I have now got a clear and workable craft room. I even found the natural colour of my carpet and my lost Crafty Diamond Tiara which I used to wear when I was stitching. So win win all around. 

Now I don't have to pull everything out when I need something as I have logged and tagged everything on my X-stitch app. It took 3 full days but it's done now. Woo Hoo!!!!

Hopefully this will mean more wips progress as that's one job that I don't need to worry about.

Off to check everyone's progress now. 

Take care of yourselves and if you have a choice, choose happiness.

Love you

xoxo Alicia

IHSW - August

Hi stunners! 

To my fellow IHSWers I hope you guys got a lot more done than I did. Unfortunately this weekend I was working nightshift on Saturday and Sunday, but fortunately I work in a radio room and when the crews aren't busy I can stitch whilst on channel. However, it was a really really busy couple of shifts.

I started work on a wip I rescued from a friend. You can read my previous post about this poor wip that a work colleague had abandoned

The biggest achievement I managed was to wash it, sort out the threads and figure out where my friend left off with this project. 

This is what it looked like before

Now I can get into some serious stitching on this baby. 

Hope you guys had a good weekend in stitches.

Xox Alicia  . 

Gifted Gorgeousness August 2016

Hi stunners!

I have a new start that fits in with the GG SAL. This is Supersized Max Colours The Butterfly Ball by Aimee Stewart, from HAED. It took 2 days and I still didn't complete the full 20 rows on the first page, with 230 colours...hellllooo confetti.

This tiny chart :p was a gift from my lovely friend Nina of Pistot-Stitches

I try and match the needleminders to the design. 

Additionally my work colleague started stitching "Jeunes filles au piano" (Young girls by the Piano) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 4 years ago. When she was a little girl, her piano teacher had this framed print hanging on the wall by her piano and Nenie has always loved it. She managed to find it in cross stitch form from Golden Kite. But it's been abandoned for all these years and it would pain my heart walking past her locker at work knowing there was a cross stitch neglected and sad in there. Soooo after years of chastising her she allowed me to rescue this lil baby. I pulled it out and it's in a mess. The parked threads will have to be snipped away as it's too frayed and fibrous to use, the fabric is soiled as she left them in the q-snaps all this time.(**Sigh**) But I will be taking it home tonight and giving it a lovely soak in my special cross stitch fabric solution. It's going to be as good as new. And then I will start working on it for the IHSW this weekend. I will give it back to her when finished though, as it's got such a lovely sentimental attachment for her. 

Best of all I have another contender for this SAL! Woo hoo!

That's all for this post stunners. Thank you to Serendipitous Jo for organising this SAL It's my only SAL so I'm very grateful to Jo as I am managing to keep up with it. 

Take care everyone.
May life be magical

xox Alicia

July's Journey

Hi Stunners!! 

I hope everyone had a Jubliant July.

Just popping in to share my cross stitch progress for July. 

I finally started my biggest cross stitch wip to date. This is "Our House" by Colin Thompson. The designer Kimberley Hill from Gecko Rouge believes it's the largest kit in the world and at 857 x 1189, which is a total of 1,018,973 stitches, I believe she is right. 

I have finished page 1 and made a wee start on the second page. My aim is to complete this room by room. So I will be stitching the boys room first and I'm not sure which way I will go after that. It's stitched on 18ct white Aida and the finished stitched size is 119cm x 165cm. The hardest thing to deal with is all the fabric when I'm working on it. 

Our House

I completed 3 rows of page 3 on my HAED Carnival Moon by Aimee Stewart. Page 4 is the one I will be submitting for the HAED FB Parking Challenge #3.

Sorry it's a bit dark, the colours are closer to the top pic in reality 

And for any Sydey siders I have discovered a shop called  "Achieve Australia" and it's a secondhand craft store with a difference. It is run by volunteers and all the items are donated and all the profits go to people living with disabilities. It is such an awesome shop.  Some are obviously from deceased estates where the next of kin did not have any interest in nanna's and great nanna's craft projects. There were sewing patterns from 1920!!! 

But this is what I encountered when I first walked in - rolls of cross stitch fabric starting at $1 a metre. See that long lemon one in the background? I snagged that baby - BOOM! 

This one made me laugh - had to take a photo of this - Note the "For Women Only" on the front. LOL!

And for those of us that need a bit of a kick start, here are some cross stitches and kits that were in different progress stages that you can buy and finish. 

I bought a few kits for friends that were brand new and unopened? Who are these people that get kits and don't open them to play with at least. But my bonza score was this beautiful brand new (and yes unopened!!) Maia kit - Misaki which retails for about $80AUD for $18.  

Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoyed your visit.  I will be back soon with the next Gifted Gorgeousness SAL post for the 15th of August...yeah right I hear you say LOL! 

Take care and keep being your beautiful selves. 

P.S. Don't forget about the Tilton Crafts Sale. The owner Shelley is having a hard time at the moment with medical issues and it will really help her out.

Love ya stunners 

xoxo Alicia

Gifted Gorgeousness July and June Wips

Hi Stunners!

All I can say is thank goodness for this GG Sal otherwise I don't think I would remember to post.  The 15th rolls around quite quickly. Well June was a birthday month for me and as crafty friends are oh so generous I have quite a few pretties to share. 

These are HAED gifted charts, the first two are are new releases.

Saccarine by Gracjana Zielinska was a gift from my lovely friend Nina and Tea Fairy by Enys Guerro was a gift from our beloved Helvi. 

And from Jayne I was gifted QS Hatter by Hannah Lynne which completes that Alice in Wonderland series. Woo Hoo!!! Thanks Jayne, love my Hatter charts. 

Kim Howe, my beautiful friend from Queensland sent me a very generous voucher for fabric from Colour Cascades. Which is going to come in very handy as I really want to start these 2 beauties.

I was also blessed by the ever delightful Kim Nield and Angie Perrett with Gecko Rouge Vouchers. Which will be used to buy the kit - Shelf Life by Colin Thompson. It's a whopping big chart and is over a million stitches, with the width being 1200 or so stitches. Woo Hoo!! But I think it will be super fun to stitch as every 10x10 grid is going to have some insane detail. 

Shelf Life - Colin Thompson

And for some cuteness overload. I am now the lucky and very proud owner of a beautiful personalised fuschia towel from Sharine and one of her handmade hair ties from Charbella Creations. Tots famous when you're branded on a towel. Respect! 

And Hannah (my daughter from another mother in an alternative reality) sent me a beautiful handmade card. Gotta love that Unicorn tail. I hope it's a tail anyway!

And if you're sensing a theme, anyone that knows me, knows that I love love love Unicorns. My friend from work adapted a kids book to make it more personal to me. It's so cute and a great idea. 

Thank you so much ladies for your ever so generous and thoughtful gifts. I greatly appreciated it. xoxo

And of course one must always reward oneself for making it through another year of life. So from the Crafty Princess I received this Gecko kit which I managed to buy in the 35% sale. Double Whoo Hoo. 

And I bought the Material Pack for Alisha in the kit sale from HAED, which I started 2 seconds after I opened the parcel. t's my first time using 18ct magic guide though, and I love it!! 

That's it for the GG SAL.

June Achievements 

The HAED facebook Challenge #2 - fail

This challenge was to stitch a page using cross country stitching, one colour at a time. I have tried this before but usually gave up on it as it really doesn't suit me. Well I gave it a really good go for this challenge and came up short...again. I just don't like it. I wish I did though, as I loved watching it come to life as more and more colours were packed on but hunting down those ninja stitches took the fun out of it for me.  I guess I'm just a parker. Which is why I'm excited about challenge #3 which is using the parking method. I actually have a chance of completing this one. Well here's what I managed anyway. 

Faces of Faery 81 - JBG 

I worked on Farewell to Lothlorien from Paine Free Crafts. It doesn't look like much but that's 3 page finishes. Oh yeah!!!

It's not the greatest photo but trust me in reality it looks so realistic. It's the beginning of the little pond and the detail is incredible. Absolute testimony to Sarah Paine's charting talent. I was sorry to put this one away but she will come back in the rotation again. 

I also worked on Cordelia (she reminds me of Cordy from Buffy), don't you think?) aka Vanity.  I really really wanted to get to the end of the rows as it would have marked the halfway point for the first row but I just didn't quite make it. Sad face :(

Thanks for visiting stunners. I hope July has been a great month for everyone, in every way.

If you have a choice, choose happiness!


Big love
xoxo Alicia