741 - Sketch a Day 2014 Update

Jan 22nd. Original image.

Jan 23rd. Original image.

Jan 24th. Original image.

Jan 25th. Original image.

Jan 26th. Original image.

Jan 27th. Original image.

Jan 28th. Original image.

740 - Saves the Dates

I'm so happy that I've finally sent off all my save the dates so I can actually blog about them. We decided to go with stamping our save the dates on brown paper tags. Our wedding is woodland themed, so we wanted things that were brown and quite natural looking.

We also decided to go with a pre-printed stamp to save us printing loads of things or hand writing them ourselves! We picked this one from Not on the High Street, which I can only say good things about. It came very quickly and just looked lovely when we used it. 




We also got a little thistle stamp from a local stamp shop in Edinburgh to fit in with the woodland theme/fact we're Scottish, and we put this on the back.



Finally, we popped them in green envelopes, with an added evening invitation stamp we got from eBay for the evening guests.



And now they are all gone, it's just the invites to get sorted now. Phew!

739 - X-Stitch Book

This week I've been ill, and one day when I was feeling very sorry for myself I decided to cheer myself up by buying X-Stitch by Sarah Fordham. Even if you're not aware of the book you've probably seen Sarah's awesome creations all over the place, I think I discovered her through Pinterest. I've been following her on Instagram and Twitter for a while too, so knew her book would be right up my street. 















So here are 5 things I love about this book!

1. There's no thread colours list, which means you can just be free and make up your own colours! I know you can do this anyway even if there is a list, but I usually cave in and buy the colour I'm being told to. You know what this means guys? No little symbols that are hard to read. Just coloured squares! Hooray!
2. There's tips on designing your own cross stitch, which you don't get a lot. I've had a pad of square paper for ages now, and after one attempt at a Bio-Shock pattern have never tried again. However, I might give it a bash now. 
3. The patterns! There are amazing things like shrimp, flying ducks, Nintendo controllers and those little china dogs you get in pairs! Everyone is so cute and that bit different from what you usually see. 
4. I love the mix of tiny and big patterns. Sometimes cross stitch can feel like it takes forever, but there are so many tiny patterns in here, perfect for buttons and the likes, I feel like I'll be able to dip in to it instead of setting myself up for a huge project.
5. The actual project, as seen above (especially the t-rex bag and the owl collar) are so cute. Love seeing ideas to do things with cross stitch rather than just framing it. Also, I have so many self-cover buttons it's not even funny, so I know a lot of them will be getting covered with these patterns. 

I have no excuse for buying another cross stitch book with the amount of cross stitch magazines I own, but this one is amazing. I love the mix of patterns and they all appeal to me and the sort of things I would want to stitch. I can't wait to get started!

738 - Sketch a Day 2014 Update

Jan 15th. Original image.

Jan 16th. Original image.

Jan 17th. Original image.

Jan 18th. Original image.

Jan 19th. Original image.

Jan 20th. Original image.

Jan 21st. Original image.

737 - Art Supplies

So one of my New Year's resolutions is to use my art supplies and do more bigger pieces of art and not just the little bits and pieces I usually do (which I'm basically doing with my sketch a day anyway). As a sort of guilt myself into actually using all my lovely things, I thought I would post about my art supplies. It also gave me a chance to go through everything and see what I actually had.

I bought like everything I wanted a couple of years ago in the post Christmas sales, so I'm sad to say some stuff actually still has the wrapping on! Bad Kim!



Oil and chalk pastels. I used these a lot when I did art in high school. The chalk pastels I think I've actually had high school, but I bought myself a new set of oil ones as the other set had been put in a pencil case instead of the box (for some reason) and were quite dirty and snapped in several pieces.



Next up watercolours. The WH Smith set and the white pallet are also brand new. The white ones I've had for a while but I wanted a bigger selection of colours! I love watercolour paintings but I feel it's quite hard to control sometimes and I usually plump for watercolour pencils out of fear! But what's the worst that can happen eh!?



Oils and acrylics (including the small black set I got with one of those wooden drawing dolls). Ones I've never really used to be honest. I had a shot of the acrylic ones a while ago when I was doing a painting of Harley Quinn (which I decided to swap to pencils on half way through because I got lazy). Oils I've never had a shot of, ever, but my gran used to use them all the time so I thought it would be nice to have a shot.



Normal colouring pencils and watercolour pencils. I use these all the time so no problems there.



More watercolour pencils (again my set from high school), sketching pencils and a posh sketching set. The sketching set definitely gives me the fear because it's so pretty and I just don't feel I have the skills to use it! Plus I always want to colour things in all the time!



Lovely fine line pens, charcol (which lord knows how long I've had) and loads of paint brushes.



And other art related supplies. Oil paint spreader things, rules, pallet, more sketchy pencils, rubbers, sharpner and foldable water pot.



And all my sketch pads. One for oil paints, my normal one and two watercolour ones.



And finally, the lovely box I keep everything in!

I love all my things so much, I need to get over the fear of that first use, and just dive in! Wish me luck!

736 - Kim Pine Cross Stitch

I've had this Kim Pine pattern from PixyStitches for a while now, as I got in their free pattern Friday release they do. I downloaded it and filed it away for another day just to make sure I got it when it was free!

I decided to do it on black fabric, as that's how the pattern looks like it should be stitched, and I've never worked on black when doing cross stitch before. It was as bad as I thought it would be, but it certainly wasn't as straightforward as working away on normal white fabric is.

I've actually had it finished for a couple of weeks now, but I've finally just got round to framing it!





Now she's done it's up on the bookcase with her. I love the finished look and I'm so glad I decided to brave the black fabric as it just makes it look really bright! Plus Kim Pine is my spirit animal.

735 - Sketch a Day 2014 Update

Jan 8th. Original image.

Jan 9th. Original image.

Jan 10th. Original image.

Jan 11th. Original image.

Jan 12th. Original image.

Jan 13th. Original image.

Jan 14th. Original image.

734 - Engagement Hoop

Even though they got engaged ages ago, this weekend was two of my best derby friend's engagement party. Kirk is a fellow ref and Griz is a former player, current bench/line-up person. I had the best time at their party, all the derby people are just so lovely.

I spent a while trying to think of what to make them for a present, and finally got my inspiration on the day of the party, but I was happy I managed to finish it.








I'm very happy with how it turned out! I searched Pinterest for inspiration and cobbled together the hoop from little bits of ideas from 3 or 4 different hoops, just picking out all the little ideas I liked. And picking the colours and buttons to use was a lot fun!

733 - Sketch a Day 2014 Update

So we're a week into my sketch a day 2014 project, and I'm pleased to say I've managed one everyday so far. Though I have had a couple of late nights where I've come in from skating or something and realised I've not done one! But it's nice that it's pushing me to draw a little everyday, even if it's just a quick sketch with a pen.

So here's my first week's progress.

Jan 1st. Original image.

Jan 2nd. Original image.

Jan 3rd. Original image.

Jan 4th. Original image.

Jan 5th. Original image.

Jan 6th. Original image.

Jan 7th.