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

Attitude of Gratitude

Hi Stunners!!!

As the end of last month was my birthday month this post is all about gratitude! 

To start with I would love to thank and welcome my lastest 5 followers. Welcome Randi Martin, Marcy, Kathy Denehey, Linda and Nurdan Kanber. Thanks so much for stopping by and joining the followship of the Crafty Lunatic Princess.

By the way if any of you received a scam email from my email address neon_princess33 stating that I had been robbed in the Philippines and to send me money. I truly apologise as my email account had been hacked. I'm ok and still in Australia and thank you to all that offered to send me money. And to Kim (scullys cross stitching) who knew it was a scam as she stated on my fb page that if it were really me I would be asking for fabric and thread...You're such a scream Kim and you know me so well LOL! I have changed the password and security questions and lodged a complaint with Yahoo mail so it should be safe now.

And to the following people thank you for your lovely Crafty gifts that I have received this year.

Mrs Dibble was at the Salvation Army store recently trying to acquire some old furniture to refurnish as a project and came across this old DMC thread sample chart for 50 cents!! I would have paid 50 bucks for it. Which she gave to me as a "just cos your my friend and I thought you would like this gift"!

 

 

Jo (who can't think of a clever nickname - Serendipitous stitching) designed, stitched and sent me this card for Chrissy. It just made it into January so it still counts. Isn't it too perfectly cool?? I'm working on something special for Jo at the moment but it's a surprise so please don't mention it to her.

 

 

 

My mum busted me gazing wistfully at the Needle Needs website at the Millennium Frame and then to my huge surprise I also received the Millennium frame with 2 lots of stretcher bars for Christmas AND a Bottle of Chardonnay. Princess parents rock! (It counts as they ordered it in December but I didn't receive it till March!)

 

Nina (Pistellen-Stitching) honoured me greatly by awarding my blog the AGI Award. Thank you Nina you really keep me motivated and love my stitching even more. Plus you've inspired me in other areas of my life with your thoughtful emails. Thank you again stunner xo

Unrelated fairy pic that I like.

And thank you to my Bff Lori "Angel" Marlow for my lovely birthday cake. It's not cross stitch related technically but cake making is still a craft. How cute are the little icing Princesses? And the candles indicate my mental age. Bless you Angel cakes. You can't even see the bit that Zac (her beautiful doggie) licked. Somehow he managed to get a tongue under the cake cover and lick all the icing off one side. Ha ha! and Yes we didn't eat that bit...

 

 

Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You stunning stunners for my beautiful gifts and award!

And for my self gifting I bought a few new stash enhancements from the 50% off HAED sale

Darkness Falls - Maxine GADD

Hidden - Bente Schlick

Primrose - Jessica Galbreth

The Dreaming Tree - Aimee Stewart

QS Tarot Fairy 12 - Babette Vanderberg

  

I was going to buy the full size chart (as above) but I thought she looked a little weird. By the position of her left leg it kinda looked like her head was on backwards and she should have been walking forward. But the more I looked at the QS the more I liked it better anyway. Does anyone else see this in the full size or is just me??

Candied Apples and Candy Corn - Jane Wooster Scott

Isn't Candied Apples wild? There's just something going on in every part of the picture and when I get a little weary of confetti - there's that lovely chunks of colour in the sky!

Mini Steampunk iThing - Chris Down

Cherry Blossom Lake - Gordon Fitchett

This is possibly going to be my next SAL with Mrs. Dibble.

and last but not least from Paine Free Crafts

Apocalypse Princesses - Tess Fowler

 

Baby Dragon with Hot Sauce - John R Wohland

OMG how cute is he??? This is exactly the same pose I strike when I receive Crafty Parcels in the mail...

and this is the expression of my postman after he hands them to me!!

 

Now for the stitching progress:

 

I've decided to abandon all stitching schedules, rules and other restrictive wahoos. I find that I spend so much time devising them and then stick to them for a whole 10 minutes and end up just stitching what I like anyway but feel guilty about it. I really do have the attention span of a tiny tiny gnat. 

So I think this is the best practice for me and it means I stitch more as I don't feel compelled to, the only side effect is that I am constantly starting new charts. But hey ho. Remember my motto stunners - "To achieve a finish, one must first make a start" Sounds a bit Yoda-like I think the force is with me on this. 

I have 6 new starts in the wings. So in the next 6 posts or so I will feature the progress on each. I'm hoping to get a least a page finish on all before I post but I will see how that goes!!!

After that I will have 37 charts in my rotation and I will stick to these like glue until I get some substantial finishes. This isn't a rule as such more of a Princess promise to myself.

Here are the WIP Pictures!!!

Faery 2 

 

Initially I was working this chart one row at time, then it went to 10x10 blocks across the entire chart. Now it's "bugger it I'll stitch the bits of the pic that I love first". So as I couldn't wait to reach the Castle, I just...stitched the castle. Man it was so liberating to do this!! I have no idea why I have restricted myself all these years to just do page by page in chronological order. Silly Princess!

I was a little disappointed when working on the castle as I thought it looked quite blobby and wasn't capturing the detail of the original art but then I guess it looks ok when you step back a bit. Hmmm.

 

 

 





 

Where is my Valentine?

 

Once again - how awesome is my new camera??? It makes such a difference.

 

Purple Orchid

 

 

 

Ok the fabric isn't as vibrant as all that, I've been mucking around with the settings but it's much closer than with the old camera which looks like it's just on plain grey fabric. And that my friends is a page finish for Purple Orchid..woo hoo!

 

That's all from me stunners. Now that I've abandoned that ridiculous schedule  I will have updates more frequently and therefore my posts won't be as huge.  I didn't like to post unless I had something worthwhile to show you and as the schedule was only stitching 400 or so stitches before moving on it didn't make for great progress pics.  So as I'm stitching something when I like, for as long as I like in the rotation I should have quicker progress pics.

 

Love you all and thanx for stopping by!

Have fun in everything you do.

xox Alicia 

IHSW - It's all over for the Lovers!!

Hello my stunning stunners!!

Welcome aboard Johanna, Mountain Ash, LesleyAnne Smith and Emma and thank you for joining me and my other followers on this cross stitch adventure. You're just in time to witness a miracle! 2 not 1 but TWO finishes!!!

The star crossed lovers have met their end WooHOO!

QS Lovers

They are my first yearly goal to be completed (and more than likely my last). I still have 2 more finishes and 6 (large charted) pages on Golden Wood to truly realise my cross stitch dreams for 2012.

Sorry the photo is really yucky but I just couldn't get the light right no matter how many location changes I had. So this is the for now photo and I will post a better one in the gallery when I can figure it out!   

And I also completed my first of four charts that I have in the Bothy Threads Gorjuss range.

So here is I found my family in a book.

She is stitched on 14ct Aida from the hand dyed range from the lovely boys at Sew it all. Next will be "Puddles of Love"

As most of you know HAED had a brilliant 50% sale recently. I could have bought a whole load of charts but the ones I picked were just a different variation of charts I already had. So I decided to only get ones that are truly different to what I own.  Weirdly I could only find one.

BOOTSTRAP BETSY - JASMINE BECKET-GRIFFITH

I just loved the bright red parrot and I was curious about how the tatts  would turn out.

I so so so so want to start her but I'm still on a high about my 2 finishes that I kinda want to stick to my rotation and score a few more finishes under my belt. 

I have already planned 6 new starts as my rotation goes. These include QS Salvatore to replace Lovers in the rotation and I will be starting a SAL with the very stunning Kim from Scully's cross stitching fame with Rose Cerise in December. Just waiting on fabric and thread to arrive on that baby!

So Betsy is gonna have to wait her turn I'm afraid but she is right up the top of the list!

IHSW

With the advice of the Lovely Nina I started on the Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL for the IHSW.

It started in July and we get sent a page every month for a year. I joined late and had to catch up on 5 pages. They aren't huge but I have been waiting for ages for the sparkly threads that I ordered to arrive. So I thought I would stitch on what I could which is just the normal threads and some beading. It's my first time beading and I found it really really difficult. If anyone has any tips I would welcome any advice as there is a tonne of it in this chart!!

So I made a start on page 1 and 5.

She is being stitched on 40ct sparkly peachy coloured linen 2 over 2. It's pretty cool not knowing what the final picture looks like - when you receive the email the first page is what the final pic looks like up to that page. So I just close my eyes and keep clicking till I get to the chart so I don't peek at what it looks like so far. I know I'm an idiot. But you were forewarned LOL!!!


Moving on!!

HAED have released the 2013 Freebie SAL. Sign ups are still open and the charts are fabulous! I vowed I wouldn't join in next year as I have alot going already, (Yeah yeah I know you've all heard that from me before --- and guess what you'll probably hear it from me again in the future hee hee) but when I saw them there were actually 3 that I really wanted to do. They changed the rules a bit which I think was a pretty cool change as it gives you more incentive to actually continue the SAL all year.


So my choice was Ciro Marchetti's

QS Theatre of the Absurd

Theatre of the Absurd could actually be the title of my autobiography. That's the stage my life is played out on. Truly!!! LOL. Well it makes sense due to being a lunatic in all facets of life especially cross stitch.



I loved the full version when it was released but decided I had enough Marchetti's in my stash so I didn't get it. But I couldn't pass this one up. Isn't it just dreamy, I love how the purples and gold look together. Also the tally as of this date is only 19 stitchers signed up for it with a whopping 106 doing Spanglers Literate Dragon. So I had to go for the underdog!

My second choice was Mystic Garden (another Marchetti).

The full version is actually called "Peacocks Garden"

Although the Peacock's are lovely it was really the white tigers that I adored in this chart. So it was serendipity that HAED released the QS with only the tigers...OMG the universe is friendly!

Anyhoo I already have "Peacocks Lagoon" in my stash which is very similar and the Peacocks are nicer in this one. So it was completely win win for me. I plan on keeping up with this SAL so I will be sent the rest of the charts in the end.

Man that was a real plug for Ciro Marchetti huh? Well he deserves it for producing such beautiful art!

That's all stunners. Talk soon and may your world be filled with sunshine and rainbows..now I'm going to check out every one's progress on IHSW mwah mwah!

xoxo Alicia