Pencils, Pastels and ... wow!

Sacreligious, I know, but I haven't touched a needle since finishing 'Branches'! I don't intend to give it up though, but I have been quite slack with stitching of late - unless I had to, that is!! I hope to get that 'Child of Spring' cushion finished up over the weekend, but I wouldn't hold your breath as it looks like a busy one in general. So, now what's new, huh??

I've been having a bit of a pencil and pastel fest of late and <-here's what I've been buying.

I love these Derwent sets of things, so I bought both of these (the 24 piece Pastel and Drawing Collections) on e-bay for about 35-40% of the retail price including the postage costs! They come up all the time there, but are often almost full price, so it's just a question of knowing what you're looking for and waiting for a decent offer. The set of 64 pastels here is only cheap, bought it at one of those bargain bookshops for £6.99 yesterday, but I thought they would be good to learn with - along with the other set of 24 kids' things I've got. I'm kinda saving the Winsor and Newton set (another e-bay bargain a while ago) until I can paint something more worth the quality pigments! I did Armes Mäusle with the good stuff. Shown here are also the watercolour postcards and the fab square sketchbook I got from the art place in Salts Mill about 7 or 8 weeks back.

'Branches' lands tomorrow lunchtime. I do hope that everyone remembers whose show it is (i.e. not mine!) and nobody makes a fuss!

Jane has kindly nominated me in the 'You Make My Day' awards. Thank you SO much, Jane! I'm sorry I won't be going to the M'cr show next weekend after all, so I can't meet you, but I really am stunned and delighted that someone would put my blog in for this! Again, thank you so much! I'll have to think about who I'm going to 'vote' for now....

"Branches" is done!

There were times when I thought I would never see the end of this one, but here it is completed. Fanfare please:

Later on I'll post it to my Webshots along with close-up pics of many of the individual elements. I'm still not au fait with Photoshop Elements, so this is not the best of pics. It seems to bleach out at the edges, esp. the lower one when you lighten the picture. Still, must be done as it looks awful when flash is used on it!

Click on the image for a better picture, (except I've just noticed a stray piece of thread under the branch the bird's on!!).

All that remains now is to deliver it and to make the inserts. I discovered that the paper I had that I was going to use was creased and unusable for this last night, so I'll have to risk doing part of it where it's future owner may see, but I've already thought of a cover story, (one that's true as well....)

Later on: All done and delivered. His nibs was out today, so I could show it off in safety and didn't have to keep a look-out!! Now then, I'm about to enter it in the Hobbycraft Big Arts and Crafts Challenge. The winners are to be decided by vote after the judges have picked a shortlist of 20 entries, so I'll post the link to the voting if I get through and then, if you think mine is the best (and I hope you will!), please vote for me! I could win £250 of vouchers for art and craft things! Their prices are high, but who cares if it's free, huh?

Not too far to go on 'Branches' now.....

It's moving very much towards completion, I'm relieved to say! Yesterday I finished the tree itself, put in several foreign language letters and a German flag, (the recipient did his first degree in German and is still fluent), put the tassles on the Leeds Uni scarf and generally got very stiff around the upper and neck with it and had the worst headache!!! DH gave me a good rub on my neck etc, which helped quite a lot!! Bless the man!!

Today I expect to have the metallic letters completed - about another 4 to go for Hebrew, Arabic, French and Polish, then the slip football (which needs re-stitching), the 3 boules and the gold kid leather saxophone putting at the base of the tree as well as the doorplate and possibly uni logo attaching. That will just leave the bird to re-stitch and the twigs and foliage to put on the tree and some grassy bits to add at the bottom for general effect. I've also asked DH to help prepare the card blank. I've got a pre-made aperture card, which is great, but the backs are too weak for one this size and so I also got 2 sheets of extra matching card to strengthen it, as well as mountboard needing cutting to size (this is probably going to need stretching a bit and proper lacing etc), then the inner sheets for the signatures need preparing.... Lots to do yet. It's amazing anything else is getting done!

So, 'Branches' should be completed sometime Monday or Tuesday. I've given up on the idea of delivering it tomorrow as it's just too rushed. One more day won't matter that much and no-one's been nagging me. I'll be glad to get it done though as it's been taking up so much of my time this last week that I'm unashamedly sick of the whole thing! That, however, is the fault of a double dose of the 'flu and a bad cold, not the project itself, which is a lot easier than I'd feared.=)

Thanks so much for all the encouragement, including that to join Webrings! I haven't applied to Around the Block as they're a very much CQ ring who require 80% of posts to be CQ related and I've never posted about or stitched any CQ in my life, so I can't expect them to approve me and fair enough not!=) Similiar with the Stitchy Fingers ring. I've looked it up, but I can't honestly describe myself as a 'quilter who blogs'. I'm not a quilter. I've only ever done one piece of patchwork in my life. The description says, 'we may do other stitching, but we always quilt' and so, as I never do, I can't qualify here either. I might later on though as I hope to take a City & Guilds level 1 in P&Q to learn the basics.

Some more progress shots

Here's the latest overall shot of 'Branches'. I don't seem to be able to do one in decent light! I always have to make a lot of modifications to the image and then it gets bleached out. Hmmm. I'd better get it sorted by the time it's final photo time! As you can see, I haven't re-done the bird yet, but I will later on today. I've also done 3 boules and a football to apply as slips, but at least the football will have to be re-done as it's rubbish too!!

I'm pleased with this area though ->
It's not finished yet as there are tassles to go on the scarf and some letters to hang off the middle branch you can see here. I at least finalised the design yesterday and that helped a bit. I'll be simplifying a bit of it.

Much to my enormous relief,
<-these arrived in the post about half an hour ago. I can now get the tree itself completed!

So, let's hope I can get it DONE today and only need to mount it tomorrow. Well, let's hope.....

Sandra, I know what you mean about not being able to find what you want in embroidery shops. It's not just that one either, it's a common problem. I suppose the real issue is that papercrafts are what many people want and, if the trader wants to stay in business, then he has to stock items that meet the majority demands. Makes it blinkin' hard to get the threads you need though, when the nearest retailer is two counties away!

Home, plus the latest on 'Branches'

Just got back from our happy hols (vacation) a few hours ago and got all the usual getting-home type sorting out done. DH cooked tea, (bless him!), but he's done a lot of that lately whilst I was ill. Still fighting the nasties off, which I think is getting a bit much now that it's well over 3 weeks, and I was very cross to realise that it was coming back whilst we were away....Grrrr! Still, people have been saying how vicious the current set of bugs are..... Oh joy!

Anyway, managed to get a fair bit of 'Branches' done, although not as much as I wanted. I ran out of WDW 'Bark' thread with a fair amount of tree left to insert. Anyway, got 4 of the other elements stitched on and there are another 3 prepared ready to apply last thing.

I'm most unimpressed with the bird at the top which, as you can see here, is rubbish! I intend to unpick that bit and re-do it else it'll spoil the whole thing for me.

I'm happy with the other 3 elements though, the Yorkshire Rose looks quite nice and the scarf was a lot easier and more effective than I'd feared. Need to do another one, so I won't be so concerned about it.

Have put in a rush order with good ol' SewandSo for 2 more skeins of 'Bark', (although I don't think it will even need a whole one more, I just want to have plenty in as it's a fantastically effective shade), but that won't come until Saturday! I just missed their daily post collection, but that was because we'd stopped in at York to try and get the thread from Viking Loom, but guess what they don't stock!? Tja! More soon..... Most of Fri and Sat will be devoted to getting this baby finished, then I can put it all together on Sunday and hand it over on Monday. Don't you just love tight timescales? If it hadn't been for this dratted bug......