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.
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)!
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.
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 tarrifs 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...
And I made these both last night and today at lunch, but I ironed them at lunch.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I don't think I have ever posted about my adventures in dying aida!! That's shocking...
Anyway, years ago, I learned a method of dying aida, or cross-stitch fabric, and I have not looked back! There are so many possibilities and it's a lot cheaper than buying it from the shops online. It's a little pricey! I have posted several cross-stitch pieces here for which I have dyed the aida myself.
I learned the oven method from a YouTube video that I can no longer find. Luckily, I wrote the steps down. I use the Rit liquid dye and the powder dye as well.
Basically for the oven method, you preheat your oven to 275 degrees. Rinse the aida in cold water and wring it out really well. Mix your dye- I never measure. I just start out with a small amount in a plastic or glass cup, and then pour a little boiling water over, and then test the color on a piece of white scrap aida by dipping a plastic spoon into the dye and water and dropping it onto the aida. A good thing to note is that the color will be a bit lighter on the fabric when it dries.
When you have the color you want, scrunch your aida into an oven- safe dish. I just use a casserole dish I have. The video said to use a specific one for dying only but I have used the ones I also use for cooking and it's fine because... well, you wash it before you cook with it, duh.
Anyway, scrunch your fabric to fit into the dish. The scrunchier it is, the more texture you will have in your design. Pour your dye over the fabric and move it around a bit to get it nice and coated. Pop the dish into the oven and cook for 30 minutes. Then you will remove the dish, remove the aida with tongs, and rinse in cold water. Wring it out and press it in a towel to get the moisture out.
Some people dry theirs in the dryer, but I just air dry mine, and then iron. It looks so cool! Here is a piece I dyed today- I still need to iron it. I will do a Toadghoul by Noctiflora on this one. For the brown bits, I sprinkled some powdered Rit dye while the fabric was waiting to go into the oven, and I like the effect it made!
I will post about the ice method in my next post, and then we will talk about the jar method.
Well, it's the last day before our Thanksgiving break and I am having a hard time concentrating at work. I'm just ready for a nice 4 days off and to eat good food and to decorate! I may start decorating my office today, at least put the little Yule tree up!
I saw something about people in North Carolina running ICE agents into the woods because they are tired of the bully gestapo coming in and harassing and abusing American citizens due to the color of their skin. It's wild this is happening in the US... anyway, someone said they couldn't think of anything more "Yee haw, fuck the law!" and I love that phrase, so I made a cross stitch pattern and stitched it up yesterday.
I'm quite happy with it and I think it will definitely get a frame and be displayed somewhere! I have those Command velcro strips I can use to hang things on the wall without damage, so I think I may use those to hang up some of my pieces in my office. I don't want to cover the walls again, because the walls in here are so nice and it's a small room and I don't want it to feel cramped, but I'll put a few up anyway.
We had an absolutely LOVELY weekend!
Friday night, we went to our favorite bar here in Pueblo. It's at a really cool food court-esque spot called Fuel and Iron. We had a couple of drinks and then hopped down to our favorite vegan spot called The Cutting Board. They have the best sandwiches I have ever put into my face hole. It was drizzly and a little chilly, which I love!
Here's a pic of the sandwich I usually get- this pic is of the first one I had back when we visited to look at houses in July and it doesn't look like much but HOLY SHIT- Confit portobello, shallots, pickles, spinach, vegan gouda (this man is a freakin melty cheese WIZARD- usually vegan cheese melts minimally if that), and some special chipotle aoili. I've had a few other things there and always come back to this.
Saturday we did adulting, and it looked like rain all day, but didn't actually rain. Apparently, it doesn't rain a ton in Pueblo, and it's sort of a situation like it was in Hutto. 70% chance of rain elsewhere means it's 70% chance of no rain here. lol but I don't mind because it's not balls-ass hot all damned year. Then Sunday, the only things I did that were "adulting" were laundry and a bit of grocery shopping super early and then the rest of the day was snuggled up on the couch doing cross stitching and watching true crime and horror movies with my sweet lil husband. Here are the results:
I finished my Amanita Phantasia pattern by Noctiflora designs on Saturday evening. This is my second pattern by her. I have a few and LOVE the colors she uses, so I will be stitching up a few more of these beauties soon! And I dyed this fabric myself :)
I have been a busy bee lately! Saturday through yesterday, I painted our new kitchen door. The reason it took so long was because I painted the stucco patches and the stucco on the frame as well as the outside frame itself on Saturday and wanted it to be completely dry before I started on the door. Then on Sunday, I painted the trim on the inside of the house and the door on the inside. I wanted to make sure it was completely dry before taping things off to touch up and doing the second coat. We were able to leave the door open to let the frame dry and do a second coat.
Sunday I painted the outside of the door, but it starts getting dark kind of early now, so I didn't have a chance to finish second coat and inside of the frame on Sunday. Monday is was SUPER SUPER windy and so I didn't do anything to it. So yesterday, I did the second coat and finished the frame and it just looks so super beautiful and I am so happy to have a door that doesn't squeak and scrape super loud every time we open it and a door handle that's not janky!!
After I finished Bigfoot, I decided to go ahead and finish the entire Cryptid Stitch-along out and ended with the Popelick Goatman!
The Popelick Goatman is one I had never heard of. Then I got this stitch-along and saw him on there. I watched a show called Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal and they had an episode about him. I thought it was really interesting.
There is a railroad trestle over Pope Lick Creek outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The Goatman is said to live there. There are accounts of him luring people there to fall to their deaths from the trestle. Some accounts say he jumps from the top of the trestle onto the hood of cars passing over the trestle. And some accounts say he chases people and they jump to their deaths. He is supposedly part man, part goat and part sheep.
Whatever he is, this depiction is awfully cute. I'm sure he's much more fearsome in real life... I wouldn't want to find out.
This is the next to last installment of The Witchy Stitcher's Cryptid SAL. This will be the first SAL I ever finished! I almost finished Lola Crow's Creepy Christmas SAL a few years ago but didn't get around to the last pattern. Maybe I can do that one next year. Her patterns are AMAZING but to make them so nice, she has to do big portions of what I call "confetti", which is several different colors in a small area that are similar and hard to distinguish between (apart from the symbols on the pattern, which sometimes my brain mixes up), and that is something I struggle with. I get easily annoyed. That's not anything against her or her patterns, and I will still do them no matter how annoyed I get, but that's just why I didn't finish that SAL.
But I digress. I technically finished all of the Cryptid SAL, but she included three cryptids to chose from for the final installment. You could choose for the last one Hodag (which I posted not too long ago), Popelick Goatman or Bigfoot. I suppose I technically chose Hodag, which I posted not long ago. Last night I finished Bigfoot. Like all the other cryptids in this SAL, he is just so cute!!
Bigfoot is one of my favorite cryptids. Apparently where I grew up in the piney woods of East Texas is a hotbed for Bigfoot sightings. I didn't know that until last year and that's a good thing because I would have been terrified to go into the woods had I known that as a kid. And apparently, The Witchy Stitcher lives in a Bigfoot Hotspot, somewhere in Canada! How interesting.
Everyone knows who Bigfoot is. "The term 'Bigfoot' is used to describe a legendary race of "ape" men all over the world, with sightings back to the 1800s. A Bigfoot is a heavy, bipedal humanoid ape. It is believed that Bigfoot stands at around eight to ten feet tall. It has dense fur, ranging in colors from red to white to brown. It has very large feet." - The Witchy Stitcher
I had a nice productive weekend. We woke up at a decent hour Saturday, and I was able to finish up my "Decorative Gourd" pattern from Subversive Cross Stitch! My mom decorates really cute for each holiday, and I thought she would like this. The original pattern says "It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers!" but this is the one I was talking about that I wanted to make for Mom, and wanted to clean up. I thrifted the frame from Goodwill and I think it's perfect! It only cost me $3! I used the DMC Charles Craft printed aida in the orange color.
For this one, I wanted to go square or round, and there weren't any frames that fit, so I did have to buy this from the evil Christians at Hobby Lobby. I wish the picture showed the colors better, but this was the best I could do without my stupid reflection in the glass. It came out nicely and now I have to figure out where to display my Christmas beauties this year! I have a lot of decorations and not a lot of space anymore, so I'm thinking maybe I'll just switch out stuff each year and rather than hang my Creepy Christmas set up (since I can't hang things easily), I'll put these up somewhere this year and then figure out a way to display the others next year.
We had lunch at Applebees. I got a drink called the Slay All Day Rita. What a silly name for a drink... it was really good!
Maybe it was due to the day drinking but I was absolutely KNACKERED when we got home from running our errands... but I made myself get up and do some tidying around the house. I started not feeling great, like I had a horrible headache that evening and I felt a lot of pressure on my sinuses, so I just spent all day Sunday resting (Dr. Allen's orders) and watching TV. I started on my Bigfoot cross stitch but didn't really get very far. But today, I do feel a lot better and I'll probably work on it a bit tonight.
Right now, they have all the Christmas stuff out and it makes me excited! They have lots of candles out at WalMart and I know, it's an evil, evil, company, but some of us can't afford $25 candles elsewhere, okay??? Unless they are on sale... anyway, they have the Goose Creek candles there! They make ones that smell like Little Debbie snacks and they have a Harry Potter range as well. The only ones I liked where Hufflepulff and Slytherin. I wanted to get a Hufflepuff for me and a Ravenclaw for Allen but the Ravenclaw one doesn't smell that great. So I settled for some Hufflepuff wax melts and they smell DIVINE.
I wanted to start on a cross stitch for my mom, just because, but I have to alter the pattern because it says "Motherfuckers" on it and I wanted it to say "Y'all". But I really had the itch to stitch, even after I finished my "All I Want for Christmas is Your Soul" piece, so I stitched this little cutie up last night while watching the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation with my cute lil husband. We have seen it a million times but both love that series so much.
I am not sure what count this fabric is- it's either 16 or 18 ct. It's a lot smaller than I thought it would be and it fits in my 2" ornament hoops! I think it's cute. My mom disagrees... so I MUST alter the cross stitch pattern I want to make for her!
I have had this pattern from The Witchy Stitcher for years. It was always really intimidating to me, because there is so much going on and with my short attention span, I never thought I'd be able to enjoy and finish it. Boy, was I wrong. I think it took me like a week of stitching but I did it!
In our new house, the walls aren't really meant to hang stuff on, I guess, because we have to have concrete drills to make any holes in the walls in most rooms, and in some, there is really cool wallpaper I don't want to hang stuff on, and in OTHER rooms, there is a nice white paneling they have put up that I am a huge fan of... but I plan to frame this and I will find somewhere to display for the holiday!
It's taking me a lot of self-restraint not to decorate for Christmas right now. I'm usually good until after Thanksgiving but I think it may be because last year, I didn't decorate since we were packing and this year, we're in a new home. But I'm being good! I do already have spaces cleared out for decorations, though!
I love to stitch snowflakes! I did these using 16 ct aida so they would fit into 2" hoops for ornaments. I got the patterns for them from SamplerCrossStitch on Etsy. I used variegated thread on the one of the left and I like how it looks! I don't have room on my tree for these this year, I don't think, so I'm not sure what I'll do with them but they sure are cute.
It's a bit early for Christmas stuff in our household but I wanted to start on some Christmas stitching anyway. We won't put the tree up until after Thanksgiving, and in the new place, there are far less places to put Christmas decor. But I will definitely frame this up and hang it somewhere. Pattern is by SirenStitchWorks on Etsy. It says "A Blessed Yule" in Scottish. I'm actually shocked at how quickly it came together. I finished it in two days while watching true crime documentaries after work and on my lunch break!
This week has gone by kind of fast!!
I texted Mom and Dad like I always do in the morning and Mom
said they covered the pool today. So the summer days of pool time are
officially over for 2025. I don’t think I got into the pool as much as I
thought I would when we lived there. And I can’t believe we’ve lived here
for a month and a half already!
The end of another era- I closed out the first UFCU account
that I opened back in…2009? So the only account we have left in Texas is
the bills one, which we are slowly moving over. I think we should move it
all over except what is due soon, with maybe about $100 extra in there, and
then we can move that over after those other bills are paid. I’ll figure
that all out tomorrow maybe. Then the ONLY thing left I have to do is get
my car registered and since I can go to the DMV in Coldspring and get a copy of
my registration, I should be able to get that done next week. I hope so,
I’m ready to take these Texas plates off and hang one up in the
garage. Allen hung his up in there already.
I found some more pics of some Perler Bead Sprites I've
done. I also can't remember when I did these but I found them on my IG so
thought they needed posting!
I did this one a while back and lost the top black
bead. I found it when I was unpacking my office.
In Hutto, we had rabbits all over the place to watch and fawn over. In Pueblo, it's squirrels.
The squirrels around our house are brave. They will get sort of close to you on the fence. They will come up onto the porch. They will chatter at you and then run across the top of the fence when you are trying to nail something onto the boards. When you throw a hammer onto the ground in frustration, they will laugh at you. And they also respond when you talk to them.
They're super cute, though, and I love watching them. I completed this cross stitch last night while watching Monk with Allen. The pattern is by lagodartgento shop on Etsy.
I have been thinking about doing some more perler bead art lately and it reminded me that I haven't posted a lot of my perler bead art. I did post most of it but there are some I didn't post that I did later, or just didn't get around to doing.
I made my nephew some little minecraft guys' heads one year just for the heck of it. One of the zombies didn't turn out so well, so I kept him for some reason. He's below, along with some candy, pizza, an onigiri and a cute bow I made. I was gonna make barrettes from them but never got around to doing it.
I'm not sure what Perler projects I'll do next but I alwasy get the itch at the end of the year and beginning of the next. Weird how that happens like clockwork every year!
