Box of Shame Finish - Christmas Quacker

Hello all,

Following on from my previous post and your positive comments, I took the plunge and can reveal that I have already finished a finish from my Box of Shame!

I decided to work on Christmas Quacker first, featuring Souffle the Duck from the Popcorn and Friends range. Here's a reminder of how he looked all stitched up:

All I had to do was work out how I was going to "scrap" him.

I started off by choosing the background card. That bit was easy:

Then I went through my boxes of glitter and bling to find some potential matches, includng shimmer dots and sparkle fibres:

Next came the ribbon choices, lots of oranges and yellows:

And finally the lettering and other potential embellishments:

I had a lot of options to work with so it was just a case of whittling everything down as the page progressed. I usually like to keep my pages fairly simple so that the eye is drawn towards the photographs, with the embellishments complimenting rather than overwhelming the page.

Framing Souffle was the easy part:

Then came the tricky bit about what to add or not add. I decided to keep the page really simple, especially by not using the sparkle fibres I had originally intended to sprinkle over the orange card to mimic the glitter in the fabric.

So Souffle's finished page looks like this:

What do you think? Not bad for a couple of hour's work and I'm happy! I don't mind if you say you don't like it and it looks really tacky. I fully appreciate it's not everybody's cup of tea.

For now the page is safely tucked away in my album but I have had yet another idea! I already have a 12"x12" shadow box which hangs on the wall and in which I display and rotate my scrapbook pages. So why not do the same with an 8"x8" shadow box? I can choose which piece I want to display and alter it when I feel like a change. Perfect! I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

Hopefully my next completed page will not be as "simple" as this one. It all depends on what goes with the finished piece.

Oh, and I won't be blogging my picking and choosing process again - I just did it this time to show you the steps I go through.

Until next time then,

Rachel x

Challenge Finish 9

Hello everybody!

Good grief, I'm on a roll with my stitching at the moment and have yet another finish to show you! Thank you for all the lovely comments you left regarding my last finish - I hope you like this one just as much!

This one is from 2nd January and was my first ever venture onto evenweave. To make it more difficult for myself I was also stitching white on white!

Souffle - Christmas Quacker

Featured in Cross Stitch Crazy issue ???

Stitched on 32ct Antique White Opalescent Evenweave by Fabric Flair 2 over 2

Stitch count 59 wide by 47 high

Started - 2nd January 2015

Finished - 21st April 2015

Total stitching time - 10 hours 10 minutes

With hindsight I probably should have chosen a different colour fabric (but kept the silver sparkles which you can just about see in the photo). The white doesn't look wrong, but Souffle would have shown up more on something like a very pale blue. Nevermind. I'm still very very happy with it.

I've now finished the smaller challenge pieces so will definitely not have another finish for a while - although I suppose that depends on what your definition of "a while" is!

9/59 Challenge pieces down, 50 to go!

Love and hugs,
Rachel x

DUCJC 2015 - Day 2

Good morning!

Yesterday I managed to stitch for a total of 2.5 hours on this little cutie. The duck's very similar to my daughter's "Snuggle Chum" which has been (and... shhhh.... still is) her constant companion since she was 7 months old.

I decided to stitch the snowball first and get the white-on-white out of the way. To my credit, it's also the first time I've EVER stitched on evenweave! This fabric is particularly soft so it took a bit of time for me to get the tension right, but here's the result. Hope you like it.

Christmas Quacker!

Featured in Cross Stitch Crazy

Stitched on 32ct Antique White Opalescent Evenweave by Fabric Flair 2 over 2

See you tomorrow!

Love and hugs
Rachel x