Story behind the craft: Cross stitching

I thought it might be fun to do some posts on the stories behind some of the crafting that I do.  To start off, I'll talk about my history with cross stitching.  It is something I've done off and on for several years, but I've been really into it the past few months.

I first started cross stitching in 2005.  A friend and I started doing it as a way to pass some time while our husbands were deployed to Iraq.  I still have my very first little cross stitch project:

I stopping stitching for a few years, until 2008 when I found myself stuck on the couch for about a month after a severely sprained ankle.  I finished up a couple of old projects and then started a new one.  I still remember my husband and I at Hobby Lobby - me on crutches - when we found a really cool pattern of a beautiful horse head.  I was taken by how much it looked like Leah, my grey Arabian mare. 

After my ankle was healed enough for me to be mobile again, I had another stitching hiatus until just this past April when one of my horses was badly injured.  It was Leah.  I wanted something to occupy my time and my husband suggested cross stitching.  I still had the large, started pattern that looked like her.  So I dusted off my cross stitching supplies and got back to work.

Along the way, I stumbled across people making cross stitch saddle pads for model horses.  I was highly intrigued by this and after some research, I decided to give it a try. 

My first two saddle pads:

For the next several, I decided to do a "cutback" design, as they fit the models much better.  Here are the next 4 that I made (not finished yet, just cut out):

I've since made 5 others, that I don't have pictures of yet.  I'm now working on finishing all of them.  When they are finished, they have a white felt backing and look very similar to a full size, real horse saddle pad. 

What I enjoy most about the saddle pads is my ability to make the patterns up myself.  Most have been based off of real saddle pad designs I've come across, but a few are completely original, made up as I went along, or drawn out before I started. 

In discovering ATCs and Inchies, I began to wonder if I could cross stitch them as well!  Just yesterday, I began stitching a series of 4 Inchies.  When they are done, I'm going to experiment with some finishing options, either a felt backing, like the saddle pads, or by attaching them to a card backing. 

My interest in cross stitching has really taken off in recent months, since I started playing around with designing my own patterns.  I think it's highly rewarding to not only stitch a pretty item, but to know that I came up with the design, from start to finish! 

Thankful (times two)

I remember in the past seeing blog posts for "Thankful Thursday".  Today is Thursday, the start of November, and in a few weeks it will be Thanksgiving.  So it just occurred to me, what better day than today for a post on being thankful!  I thought I'd do a list of anything that pops in.  This is by no means complete.  Though life can get me down and I have been through many dark times, if I stop and think about it, life is pretty good now. 

I am thankful for:

My husband - he is wonderful and takes such good care of me.
Our house - we have a nice home to live in.
My studio room - that I have my own dedicated space to work on projects.
Our vehicles - we have reliable transportation.
Our animals - we have a small menagerie of critters that keep us laughing with their antics.
My horse - Bo is a childhood dream come true: a horse, a black stallion, with the best disposition I could ever ask for in any horse, let alone a stallion!
We live in America and have a good life when so many others, here and around the world, are struggling.
We have freedom, including religious freedom to worship or not worship as we choose, others are killed for this.
We have electricity, computers, and the Internet for fun, research, and keeping in touch with family and friends.
We am healthy, mobile, and have our sight, hearing, and other senses.
We live in a nice neighborhood with great neighbors.
We live in a good area for us - close enough to conveniences, but not in a big city.
We have some great friends.
We have good, close families.

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there is much more, but it's a start... 

What are you thankful for? 

Another Discovery!

Shortly after learning about ATCs (Artist Trading Cards), I started seeing references to "Inchies".  Curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to find out what they were...

Quite simply, Inchies are even smaller works of art than ATC, being - you guessed it - one inch in size.  After reading about them I was super excited to try my hand at an EVEN smaller scale than the ATCs. 

So, without further ado, I present my first four Inchies!:



They were fun to make and I'm looking forward to cranking out many more of these little things. 

I also made about 15 ATC blanks, all set up to decorate.

The ongoing Studio overhaul is going well, today I spent several hours getting things set up and moved around - it's really coming together! 

So Exciting!

I've made some thrilling crafty related discoveries in the last few days and I'm just bursting with excitment!!

Now, both of these may be old news to some (or all?) who may read this, but to me they are fresh, new, exciting developments in my itty bitty corner of the craft world.

I have learned of craft swaps and ATCs.

Craft swaps are, just that...  Opportunities for people to swap crafts, supplies, etc.  I've spent the last two days pouring over what seem to be the two main websites that host swaps: Craftster and Swap-bot.  I've registered with both of them and have been digging around, researching the ins and outs of the world of craft swaps. 

(Both sites have forums and fun beyond swapping.  Craftser in particular has a LOT more than swaps going on, there are many challenges going on there, with real prizes to be won.  I'm looking forward to getting involved there; I've greatly enjoyed past challenges in other groups as they pushed me to do new work and try new techniques.)

I do remember how much fun I've had in the past participating in online Secret Santa matchups on some other forums.  With Christmas coming, I've already found a few basic swaps I want to start with: Christmas card exchanges! 

The other "discovery" for me came while looking through those swap sites.  I kept seeing references to ATCs.  I found out that it stands for Artist Trading Card.  Wow, how cool!!  An ATC is basically a miniature work of art, the size of a standard trading card or baseball card.  The tradition is that they are to be given away or traded, not sold.  They appear to be an element in many swaps and indeed I've already found several swaps that are set up just for the exchange of ATCs.  I am really chomping at the bit to get started on making some of my own ATCs - fun!!

In other news, Operation Studio Overhaul is still underway, but I've made a ton of progress.  The shelves have been arranged, all of the desired drawer units and so on were purchased, and now I've just been working on how I want my supplies and projects organized in the drawers.  I'm well on my way to a true workable space again, where I can readily access ALL of my supplies. (yay!)

Organization is a wonderful thing (the shelves with drawers partially loaded - not yet labeled):

 

 

I've also wrangled the plant nursery area down to a more manageable size.  Most of the plants I had before were young shoots I had propagated.  They have since found new homes and everything fits on the shelf now, giving me more work space or another spot to store things on a PC cart I have under the window.

 

 

I do have a dozen or so cherry tomato cuttings that have taken root in water in the only other useable sunny window (the kitchen).  They need to be potted for the winter and put somewhere...  So I may soon have another young plant invasion here to figure out how to store efficiently. 

 

For now, I'm off to the Studio to play around with some ideas for my very own Trading Cards!! 

 

 

 

 

Operation "Studio Overhaul" continues!

I've been moving things back and forth..  and back and forth again in the Studio room again today.  I've come up with a great idea for shelf placement in the largest part of the mission - which is to maximize storage space for the WIDE variety of supplies and projects I have going on.  Unfortunately I'm shot one set of holes in my shelving units, so I'll have to break out the drill (or ask hubby to do it - heehee) and drill some more peg holes to scoot the shelves higher up.  When all the drill dust has cleared, I'll actually have another skinny shelf, just the perfect height to slide in my packs of cardstock and papers - which never seem to quite fit anywhere else and end up piled here and there so that I can't find the ones I'm looking for.

Is it sad that this makes me happy?  Hark!  A shelf to keep my papers on!:

I've also been measuring the shelves and my sample storage options.  A while back we had bought one each of a couple different plastic drawer units; now I've come up with the configuration that I want to use them in. I do wish I could use something nicer than the cheap plastic drawers, but I suppose that can come later - you know, say after the Studio starts to support itself and I can invest in fancier storage options!

My fancy, handy dandy layout illustration, lest I forget what I was going for:

The trouble with trying to get all of the shelves "just so" is that all of the items normally on said shelves have to be scattered around to other places while I jockey the shelves up and down.

Sooo...  the epic mess continues.

Studio Overhaul!

Well, once again I decided to do a massive overhaul of the Studio room.  I had thought about taking some "before" pictures, but it was really bad, so I declined.  (ha!)  As with many large projects, at the moment it looks worse than when I started, but there is progress being made!  It was a mess when I started, but now...  Oh my...

There was a lot going on in the room, it was part library, part plant nursery, part creative space, part storage room.  I've been keeping way too much in there and no wonder it was getting hard to go down to the actual Studio and get focused on creating new items!  

First step was to move out all of the books and bring them up to the bookshelf in our office, swapping them for straggling supplies and projects that were lingering on the shelves up here.  I organized all of my books by subject and ended up with a pretty decent little library setup.

Then I packed up some of my model horse collection.  Did I mention that the room was ALSO being used to display a few different collections of things?  Just not going to work when I need more room for organizing supplies and so on.  So into a storage tote some of my collection went.

Basically the end result of yesterday's labors is that all of the books were moved, some unneeded things were packed up, and I started adding shelves to the units in the room, allowing for better use of space.  I'm pretty happy with how that is turning out, as I have a bunch of smaller items that were taking up entire large shelf spots.  No more!:

There's a glimpse of what I'm shooting for; better storage and accessibility of my supplies and projects.

Still needing to be addressed is the "plant nursery" section of the room:

We only have a couple of windows in the house that get sunlight, this is one of them.  This is also the only room with a sunny windowthat can be closed off from her:

The resident plant-eating cat.  She has thwarted previous attempts to protect the plants and managed to make salads of plants that are supposed to be poisonous, without any affect.  She is the fuzzy bane of houseplants in our home!  Hence most of the plants now being squirreled away in the Studio room.

Also wanting to get in on the action is the junior plant eater, our rescued barn kitten.

So, I made quite a bit of progress yesterday, but still have a LONG way to go.  Once I finally get everything squared away, then comes the task of actually re-organizing all of my supplies and then labeling each drawer/container so I can reliably FIND things when it's time to create!

Back Home and Pictures!

Well, actually we've been back home for almost a week now, but it's been a little chaotic so far getting back into the groove of things.

We had a great trip, spending a week on the motorcycle and touring through Colorado.  I took over 1,000 pictures and we are still in the process of wading through them!  There was much inspiration to be had, but I didn't collect anything like I had hoped to, we just didn't have any room to spare.  I'll have to be content with the pictures I took of EVERYTHING.

My husband got my website editing software up and running again just yesterday, so I'll be working on the next installment of Studio site updates this week hopefully.  I had a virus and we had to reformat my computer a few months ago (oh yay!).  It's amazing how many little programs here and there get taken for granted until you have to wipe everything out and start over.  I think my website editor was the last thing piece of the puzzle to get back to work on the online Studio projects.

I've gotten a few orders in the past week (YAY!) so I'll be getting them ready to mail out in the next day or two.

I just did some maintenance on the Studio's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HorseTenderStudio 
I deleted some links that were no good and edited some photo and album descriptions.  Plus, I uploaded my newest greeting card pictures.

I guess that's it for the post-vacation update!