It's That Sparkly Time of Year

Hello celebrators,

As time grows closer to my favorite holiday the glitter around town is becoming more abundant. It pleases me greatly and inspires me to keep working.

First things first: I had a sale this month! It was another faux stained glass piece I did years ago and it'll be shipped out tomorrow. Hooray!

A Busy Week

Hello artsy types,

This week was spent mostly working on the final touches for mysterious mysteries, which means I can't post about them. This is also a post from my iPad so the formatting will be slightly weird until I can fix that. [Fixed 12/13/14]

Mrs. Claus for StitchingPirates Contest

Hello stitchers,

I haven't been able to do quite as much beading these past two weeks as I'd like, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy! Last week I missed my blog post - I looked up at it was around 2 AM and said, "Well, guess I'll double up next time." So beware a large helping below...

Not Skipping A Beat

Hello delightful,

This week was a great sign to me that even with the lull in things that I'm able to pick the ball back up and go running as if nothing ever got in the way. I finished a dress and started a second, finished three steps in mysterious mysteries, and created the first in a series of custom spool bead patterns.

Rejection Letter

Hello artists of all natures,

It's no secret I've been in a slump for the past month or so. Before I headed off to California for my magazine photoshoot with my cousin (to send photos off to the editor in England!) I was feeling a bit unmotivated to continue, but as my friends and family assured me I had been working nonstop for so long that it was natural to burn out and have a break. I've spent the time flailing about, staring at my art supplies and feeling almost entirely unwilling to even pick up a needle. Then I did a bit of re-reading in my notes...

Another Unproductive Week

Hello hello,

My motivation is still evading me despite all the ideas I have swirling around. I actually am sitting and thinking about how to tackle Princess Peach but as far as actually starting it goes I don't have a lot to show for it. The long and the short of it is that I ordered some more pink beads to fill in the missing portions (and have a few more on the way) and should have the beading for the bodice started this upcoming week.

This is also the first time I've created and posted from the iPad app, so we'll see if this comes out ridiculous looking or not.

Hopefully I'll have something to show for all this,

Pinky

Ashley Mae

Not exactly back in the swing of things, but feeling better

Hello fellow artists,

I've been absent the past few weeks for a handful of reasons, the top one being that I've had a bit of artist's block or, as I've been told, worn myself out from it. All my friends, my mother, and my brother said I needed a break. As my brother put it, "You've been working on art every day for years, let yourself have a vacation!" Well, so I have. Every time I so much as looked at my beads or patterns I was suddenly way more interested in cleaning or going back to bed. It was downright awful even thinking about sewing.

For the first time since this began, yesterday I looked at the beads I have gathered for Princess Peach and actually wanted to do something with them. I got online, hunted down through fierce determination the two shades of pink I was missing (one was marked as "salmon", feh!), and was even excited to start working on her pattern again! Like, I'm wondering how I'll be able to get all that gold detail in on her bodice without it becoming clumpy - that's going to be a lot of fun to figure out!

With that, I'll bring you up to speed.

Is it art block or something else?

Hello hello,

These past few weeks haven't been the highlight of the year when it comes to creating artwork. It's not that I don't have a ton of ideas or even a ton of projects to do, it's just that I really haven't been feeling it. I find myself making excuses for pretty much any sort of project right now; even rearranging all the furniture in my room sounds more fun than starting the next sewing project. And that's awful seeing as I love to do that.

Onto happier things though, right? Here's what's been going on this past week:

A Quick Update for a Quick Week

Hey artsy friends!

This week is super short because most of it has been spent on my mysterious mystery project. I couldn't tell you all the work I've done even if I wanted to because of the secrets, so you'll just have to live with it until it can be revealed.

Ashley Mae
Pinky

Mirabilia's Dressmaker's Daughter: Mostly Finished! + Onwards

Greetings my lovely readers,

This week marks the finalization of the time consuming project I started in January! With 263 hours of stitching and 26.5 hours of beading, a total of 289.5 hours, it's finally all come together. I'm saying "mostly" at the top because I want to figure out a saying / phrase / quote to go along the bottom with my signature. It was quite the journey with many progress photos along the way, but all my patience has paid off!

I'm smiling back there, I swear!

WIP: Mirabilia's Dressmaker's Daughter (Almost Done!)

Hello my crafting friends!

This past week has been very busy behind the scenes and the main focus on art has been beading Mirabilia's. I did a lot, I swear, from sunrise to sunset I've been on the move every day, but as I sit down to type this I'm finding it hard to pin it all down.

Could this week get any happier?!

Hello hello!

This week marks the finishing of my version of Mirabilia's Dressmaker's Daughter, part 1: the stitching. Part 2 started today and is for adding all the beading!

263 hours of extreme relaxation. See the full scan [here].

Uneventful

Hello artsy types,

This week wasn't entirely empty, but it is without a lot of chatter. I've finished the background on Mirabilia's Dressmaker's Daughter: Spring this week and started the actual dress. I also found a page from a magazine instructing how Mirabilia wants beads done!! This is a huge help since nobody else (even Mirabilia) has been able to provide instructions for that to me before.

I am a Self-Loving Creature

Hello my glitter-loving friends,

This week marks the completion of the Sunflower Ballerina so she just needs her final photoshoot now. Her completion marks 26 five-inch-tall dresses finished and 500.5 hours (no typo!) on the final hour marks for them. There's, naturally, plenty of extra uncounted hours involved with planning and pattern-drawing (at the very minimum 100 more hours, in fact). I'm quite proud of my achievement and this isn't a secret. In fact I was so happy about reaching 500 hours that I even allowed a rare photo of myself slip into the mix.

Sleeping All Day Makes for Less Work Done

Hello my sleepy crafters,

My sleep schedule knows no limits and it would seem that I am back in the reverse schedule this week where I doze come sunrise and wake at sunset. I have no excuses or reasons for it, it's just what seems to happen over a period of time and hopefully next week I'll be back on society-acceptable sleeping patterns. As such, the progress on artwork this week has been placed more on planning stages than actual working.

Plans and Currents

Hello there my artsy friends,

This week has been dominated by a distracting amount of Arizona monsoon storms! Every day this week it's rained and while I would love to blame power failure on my lack of WIP photos, the truth is I turn off all the lights intentionally to watch the storms. There's still been plenty of work done in the meantime, with two sales helping me restock supplies and three dress plans coming into fruition. Let's start with the current work and then move onto the upcoming plans!

A Stitchy Week

Hello my quality readers,

This week was spent mostly on cross-stitching with the time split up among three different projects with a fourth looming on the edge. I finished a bead dress at the beginning of the week so, quite naturally, we'll start there.

A Very Long, Very Busy Week

Hello my equally-or-more busy friends,

There are weeks where I look up and realize it's Thursday and wonder where the entire past three days have gone. "What have I been doing with the past 72 hours", I ask myself. Usually the answer comes back, "nothing." This is not one of those weeks.

WIP - Coffee Ballerina Bead Dress

Hello, beaders and friends of!

I've spent this week working on a single new bead dress. I honestly thought it would only take me a couple days to do and then I could move onto the next, but I've run into an extremely unexpected problem that has hindered progress to a slow crawl.

Finalizing Pieces - Alicia, Butterfly, Prize - and Starting New Ones

Hello bloggy friends,

This week was very eventful for me! As the title suggests I've finished Alicia, am in the final stages of the butterfly, and have finished a small dress pendant this week. That leaves me with a lot of empty project spots that need filling, so let's get started.

WIP Update: Alicia and Graceful Butterfly

Hello artsy types,

I thought I would have more to update about this week, honestly, I did! What happened was we bought the DLC pack for Pikmin 3 and spent at least two days doing that. That's a third of the week gone! The remaining days were spent on Alicia, the custom bead dress based on GraniteFire's work, and a new xstitch piece, a butterfly with fancy framing.

Much Art Progress: WIP - bead dress and dressmaker's

I don't have a whole lot to say in terms of progress this week (it's the same ol' thing), but I did make significant amount of it!

Mirabilia WIP - Dressmaker's Daughter: Summer

Hey there fellow stitchers,

I was gone for the first half of the week helping my cousin clean up a deep, mysterious closet that she's been shoving random things into for the past several years. We filled three full bags of trash and killed a more-than-my-nightmares-will-enjoy amount of spiders along the way. I did manage to get a peacock Dimensions Gold Collections kit out of the deal, along with a small box of thread, so that's going to be in the mix some day too.

Since I got back I've been working on my modified Mirabilia's Dressmaker's Daughter:

Not the most progressive thing I could be doing with my time in terms of making money, but I am enjoying it fiercely!

Alicia WIP - Custom Five-Inch Tall Bead Dress

Progress is going well, blogging types!

You may be familiar with my first two custom pieces and their creators:

Eumelia, designed by Guy2362.

Kerria, designed by Noire-Ighaan and Vinsuality, [for sale].

They were both especially enjoyable to make! Eumelia took 30 hours of pattern drawing to do, Kerria was done extremely loose from a pattern and admittedly I didn't write most of it down. Likewise, Eumelia is very particular in her detailing to be as similar to the original artwork as possible, and Kerria was done much more freestyle to implement elements into my beading.

Alicia is an unposted character from my dear friend GraniteFire, designed and modified with my bead dresses in mind. Now I can't claim credit for the inspiration itself - I didn't decide to do a bead dress from it until after I saw the finished piece - but GF was making some heavy hints on bead dresses beforehand so that's the story I'm going with, haha. GF modified the sleeves for me in the turnaround so that they wouldn't become "jagged" on the curve.

Blog Routine, Plans, and WIPs

Hi there, blogging types!

I've decided that I'm going to try and do this bit every Sunday. That leaves the other nine websites "on a whim" and means this will be my consistent update. Occasionally I won't have internet access and it may have to be scheduled ahead of time or late, but I'd like to try to keep a routine. It'll keep me on my toes and it will give a steady answer to the question, "why hasn't anything been posted in a while?". So on that plan of action, I'd like to give you my weekly thoughts-that-keep-me-awake and works in progress.

A General Introduction

It occurs to me that people who use Blogspot may not be familiar with me already. I like to believe my minor amount of e-fame has given me recognition, but I know in reality I'm just another voice looking to be heard. So, here is who I am:

First and foremost, I consider myself to be an artist. Experience has informed me that most people take this to mean that I paint. Indeed, I am a terrible painter and shouldn't be let around the stuff. I am an artisan, working in thread and needles, often throwing beads into the mix. I'm selling many of those creations through Etsy, [here]. My main crafts are cross-stitching and beading, and on occasion I've tried latch-hook, embroidery, punch-needle, glass painting, foil-scratching, embroidery on paper, and drawing. I wish that I knew how to knit and crochet, and some day I hope to learn to make quilts. Doing all this, I've slowly learned to do photography (digital) of small objects up close, and how to edit those photos to show true color or remove blurs.

Starting a Blog

Hello Blogging Types,

Word from deviantART's jamberry-song (and general ShareZone members) is that starting a blog will help boost my sales and overall exposure!

Chances are, many of my posts here will consist of what my usual deviantART journals are, but there's always the possibility I'll run around ranting about this, that, or the other thing!

I bead, I cross-stitch, and sometimes dabble in other crafty arts.

Until I figure this out,
Pinky