Perler Magnets!

 I sometimes just get in the mood to make perler bead things and last night was one of those nights.  I made the purple flower into a magnet for my mom, the Jaws poster is a magnet for my nephew, and Pennywise is... well, I don't know yet.  I copied this pattern from a pin I saw on Pinterest- like an actual pin  you would wear as well as a pinned picture on Pinterest.  HA!  No pun intended... anyway, the balloon has a little chain on it attached to Pennywise, and I would like to do that, but we'll see what supplies I have for that and what time I have.  Lastly, the Tardis is for my friend Anan who loves Doctor Who.  They're not like THE gifts, they're just getting stuck in as extras.  I love to put little extra things in my Christmas gift bags.  

I am sort of addicted to these right now so my cross stitch piece has gotten neglected but I'm gonna try like mad to finish it so I can make it my last post of the year!

Not Quite a Year-End Wrap-Up

Well, it's Wednesday and I only have a couple of more days left of work, which means I will probably only post a couple more times this year.  I don't post from my laptop because it's not the best, and I don't use it often.  

So far this year, I have completed 68 cross stitch pieces.  I am working on what may be my final one for the year but maybe not, depending if I decide to do a couple while I'm out at my parents'.  I completed 4 or 5 little diamond paintings and three embroidery pieces!  I did 30 little perler bead pieces!  As usual, cross stitch dominated my crafting this year.  

I finished the bows for my berets and here is an action shot!  I have a black one for my black beret.

And we all know I am a rabid fan of The Office- here is a perler bead sprite of Dwight Schrute that I completed last night.  I'm gonna make him into a magnet.

I'm working on a few other pieces I'm going to make into magnets, and then I may just do some for the heck of it to add to my box of "what am I gonna do with these?"  

I do have two more days, so I may be posting more perler bead pieces or maybe I'll actually finish my current cross stitch piece and post it.  You never know!

Perler Bead Fun

I did some more Perler bead pieces last night.  I am not sure what I'll do with the bigger ones but I will either do magnets, hair clips or pins from the smaller ones.  

The flower in the jar came out a little more melted than I had intended but I think it's still cute.  My favorites from this group are the bow on the upper left, the little Totoro and the cat.  I also love the tiny robot!

I think the next ones I'll do are larger bows to pin onto my hats.  

Sublime Stitching x Julie West

I had a great weekend!  My job is amazing and flew me out for our holiday party.  They also covered my hotel and transportation.  The party was SO SO much fun.  I took some cross stitch stuff with me in case I wanted to do any at any point.  I always take it and never do it, but I guess it's best to have it just in case the mood takes me.  I just don't like answering a ton of questions- it never fails that if I am doing cross stitch or embroidery, I get flooded with random questions from random strangers.  I hate the airport and so it's not the place I want to chat to people.  

When I got home and settled,  I decided that I wanted to do an embroidery piece.  I had printed out the entire sheet of the pattern collaboration between Sublime Stitching and Julie West.  I have done a few little guys from that sheet in the past on onesies, but I just wanted to do one for the heck of it, so I chose the bee flying over flowers.  I'll probably do each one of the characters on the sheet.  

I went to the Sublime Stitching page and the patterns have gotten a little advanced.  I don't particularly enjoy painting with my embroidery floss.  I prefer simple embroidery with outlines and maybe some other stitching styles here and there but I don't have the patience or talent to do a piece filled in entirely, and that's what a lot of the patterns look like.  I'm not AT ALL knocking that... it's just not what I prefer. 

ANYWAY, I went to look at the simpler PDF patterns and a lot of the old school ones are no longer available, which made me really glad I grabbed most of them back in the day!  I still have some of the actual iron-ons I got when Ginger's Needleworks was open in Austin, and I think I got the PDF version of those as well in case I lost them or wore them out.  

I'm babbling... here is my sweet little piece I finished while watching my weekly Christmas horror movie- Silent Night (2017)!

More Perler Bead Pieces

 These may be my last perler beads projects for a little while, but maybe not.  I made the bow for a hair clip, the nesting doll for... something.  I made the little Jaws thing for my nephew because that is his favorite movie.  I think I'll put a magnet on the back.  I think it's super cute.  

Perler Pins

 It's that time of year again when I get the urge to make perler bead stuff.  I cannot explain why I am like this, but I usually only do perler bead stuff in the winter.  

I prefer to do projects with the smaller beads because I often want to make hair clips or pins or magnets out of them and they just make cuter little things!  I get my beads from Perler and Artkal.  There was a really great place to get the mini beads, but they unfortunately went out of business.  They were a US distributor of the Artkal beads, which originate overseas and with tariffs and stuff, I'm sure they've gone up quite a bit on their prices.  Luckily I grabbed just about every color under the sun a few years ago and have plenty left!  

I decided since I am in a place now where the weather allows me to wear blazers and vests more than a couple of times a year, I will make some cute lapel pins.  I love to wear flair on my vests and blazers, and I thought maybe some Perler bead pins would be cool.  I may make some hairclips too, but I'm not sure.  I get all of my patterns from Pinterest, or sometimes I will use a cross stitch pattern I already have. 

I made these last night...

Weekend Finishes

 This past weekend was great.  I didn't do much, which was nice.  I did go to a Stitch and Bitch at this really cool creative space here in Pueblo and had a nice time.  There was one other cross stitcher so I sat with her and we had a good chat.  

Other than grocery shopping and Stitch and Bitching, I finished my scarf!  It's a lot thicker than I expected, but it will be great for really cold days.  

I'm really happy with it and am excited to wear it! 

I worked on this lovely during the Stitch and Bitch and actually finished it during a break from work today.  Pattern is by MutantBunnyInc on Etsy.

Back into the knit of things

 Happy Friday!  

I really want to try Bargello stitching!  I have wanted to for a while but it wasn't popular so it was hard to find instructions and supplies but there is a company out there now called Hello Bargello who makes lovely kits with everything you need plus a pattern and instructions.  They have videos on their site and on YouTube too, and I watched them all last night in bed.  I REALLY want to try it but I hate spending $40 on a kit if it's something I'm not gonna like, so I was looking for supplies at Hobby Lobby since that's the only craft store we have in Pueblo, and of course, they don't carry the yarn you use for it. So I thought I'd have a look at the yarn I have to see if it would work.  I don't know if it will, but in true Jonesy fashion, I got distracted when I pulled out the yarn, as in the yarn box, there was a blanket I started three years ago on a long knitting loom.  I had a look at it, and it's terrible.  I didn't have the right yarn for it and it was really holey, so I took it off the loom and unraveled it and decided to start knitting a scarf, using a round loom.  I'm quite proud of those color switches!

I can't remember if these are the Knifty Knitter looms or the generic ones from Hobby Lobby, but they work just as well anyway.  I find loom knitting very relaxing and a great way to pass time, because you're stitching away and before you know it, hours have passed and you have something cool!  I didn't really intend for this to be a Hufflepuff-esque scarf- These are just the colors of yarn I had the most of.  Since it's a thinner yarn, I'm using a strand each off of two skeins to make it chunky.  Chunky yarn is expensive and doesn't seem to go a long way, so I remembered that's why I got the thinner yarn over the chunky yarn.  I'm really excited to finish this one and then I think I'm gonna make a solid red one.  I'd like to learn a few more stitches as well. 

PS- I have just about decided to bite the bullet and grab a beginner's kit from Hello Bargello...

Christmas Cross Stitches in Action

I was able to decorate this past weekend and display some of my cross stitches!  I have a lot of them and since we don't have the same sort of walls or wall space as we did in our house in Hutto, I can't hang all of them.  I thought I'd display the new ones!

I'm very pleased with how this display came out.  I wanted it simple, but not so simple that it looks unfinished.  I wish the cord for the lights was silver or white.  

Snow Day and Diamond Painting

It is SNOWING outside!  This makes me very happy.  Where I grew up, we got snow a few times in my entire life.  I can probably count them on both hands, the times we got SNOW and not sleet or slush posing as snow.  But in CO, we are actually getting snow!  We got some Sunday night into Monday morning but it had stopped by the time I woke up.  It's been going like crazy all morning!  It's supposed to stop tonight.  Allen wants to make a snowman but I don't want the snow disturbed... so I guess we'll make a snowman!  Afterall, it's not all about what I want.  

Anyway, I had a really rough day at work yesterday, and decided instead of cross-stitching, I'd do a small diamond painting.  I ended up doing two.  I really love this hobby and am soon going to run myself out of these little guys!  

The one on the left is from the Paint Gems Tattoo Edition Kit and the one on the right is their Black Magic Edition Kit.  

Thanksgiving Stitches

 I forgot to post the stitches I did during our cold Thanksgiving break!  

I love stitching in the cold weather, all bundled up with a coffee or cocoa and a blanket.  I used to love it in the woods the most, and I guess I probably still do, but it's sure nice to do it in Colorado where it's actually cold when it's supposed to be cold!  

I finished this one by CryBaby Cross Stitch and I'm kind of mad that I started it too low on the fabric and I'm not even sure if I'll be able to do much with it.  This is a piece of aida I dyed last week.  I think it's gorgeous with the black.  

This is the second one I've done by Noctiflora Designs.  I started it on a piece of dark fabric and got irritated because it was not really conducive to the colors in the patterns and I messed up so I pitched it and decided I'd revisit after making another piece of aida for it, and so I did!  This is another piece I dyed last week.  I love how it looks on this fabric!  

I think I'll post about the jar dying method next, once I have a couple more pieces done.  I was going to also try to do a blood spatter pattern, but when I tested it on a piece of scrap aida, the dye bleeds too much for it to look good, so I just purchased a piece of fabric already dyed appropriately so I can do a cross stitch piece for my sister, just because.  

Paint Gems- Tattoo Edition

 Here are some of the little diamond paintings I did from the Paint Gems Tattoo Edition Kit.  I have only done a few, but I'm sort of getting back into it and so I'm sure I'll have more to post soon.  

One thing I like about diamond painting is that it's similar to cross stitch, and another cool thing is that often, the little gems used correspond with a cross stitch color, so you can make your own designs.  I have tried this without success.  Diamond Dotz makes some little grids but they are so small I can't fit a decent design in the grid. There was also a paint-by-square book I got to see if I could make some of those into diamond paintings by using an adhesive sheet over the page, but the squares are just a tiny bit too big.  I tried these methods a couple of years ago and so maybe there are better resources or ideas out there now.  I think it would be cool to design one of these myself or use a cross stitch pattern for a diamond painting.

This guy is my favorite.  

Paint Gems- Black Magic Edition

I have been doing diamond painting on and off the past 5 years or so. It started with a 16x20 diamond painting rendition of Starry, Starry Night by Van Gogh.  I don't know where in the world the picture of that finished project is.  I worked on it a bit in 2020 when I decided to try out diamond painting, and then put it away and didn't really get back into it until about 2023 or so.  I finished it after months, and ended up donating it when we moved, because I just don't have the room here to hang it up.  It was really beautiful, and I hope whoever bought it loves it.  

Anyway, I found I have more patience for smaller pieces.  Plus, the larger pieces are really expensive since they come with EVERYTHING you need, including the tiny gems that you place in the tiny squares.  I may one day complete some larger pieces, but for now, I'm sticking with smaller ones.  

Paint Gem makes some great kits.  They come with several smaller projects and all the fixin's, and they will run you between $40-$50 a kit, but they do have sales sometimes and BOGOs.  The Paint Gems kits come with between 10-16 smaller projects.   Michael's also carries smaller project kits and I have a few of those.

Here are some I have completed from the Paint Gems Black Magic Kit.