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.

The sunflower's final WIP post (the "I'm done but these aren't final photos" post) is currently one of, if not the, most popular posts I've ever made on Facebook. Perhaps I have reached the correct audience at last?

[Source for Reference Sunflower]

While I await notice or otherwise find the rainbow-coated white beads I need to begin the Monochrome Eumelia and further plan out how Princess Peach will go, my friends are already hopping up and down for more flower dresses! I'm not sure I'll be jumping on the train right away, but I have formulated some ideas in my head for it already. When I look at my sunflower dress here, I think it works because my colors are matching near identical to my reference photo (which calls back to my dilemma with Princess Peach last week). On the other hand, I know that my flower petal hem works to pull all of the textures and shades that a sunflower actually has, despite only being made up of one shade of yellow. The Sunflower Ballerina will be for sale as soon as she gets her final photoshoot, via My Etsy.

So past that, beyond sleep-schedule-fixing, planning a new healthy diet, worrying about what colors actually match Princess Peach, and wondering about how a Tulip Dress would really come together, I've been putting a few more hours into my Mirabilia's Dressmaker's Daughter: Spring.

I'm 26.5 hours into it, which means I'm still on-par for 6.5 more hours to finish the background in comparison to the other three. You can see my other progress shots for this large piece in the following links:

[Autumn] [Winter] [Summer]

I am expecting Spring to take just as long. Once the stitchwork is finished I will be properly ironing and photographing/scanning the entire piece to be posted as a clean-and-clear WIP. This is because once I do the final step of adding all the beads, crystals, and other embellishments, scanning will no longer be possible without lots of out of focus areas. I'll have to rely on photos then, and we are all aware how much I love to spend my days taking and editing photos...

Until the next busy Sunday,

Ashley Mae

Pinky