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...

First things off, Peach's skirt is sort of in stand-by while I figure it out. The pattern I used in the past for Eumelia makes a great base, but I should've expected it to be more difficult. Eumelia, of course, is a long chain of colors all the way around and only has variations on when those colors have to change. Peach will require an entire drawing of each and every bead so that I have all the transitions between lace and decals correct! I'm thinking it will take at least six graph-paper pages to get it all layed out properly before I can start, quite the task.

The spools I've been working on are also on a bit of a standstill. I have finished five of them and expect to do at least three more before I'm satisfied to release patterns via Etsy. I'm just in a kind of creativity slump for them since they're quite small and most of my patterns seem to be coming out to stripes (boring).

The large project I started and finished these past two weeks is Mrs. Claus, designed by Brooke's Books Publishing and modified by me. She'll have final photos soon and then I'll be submitting her to the StitchingPirates myths, legends, and fairy tales contest! I've already had a request via Facebook to create a 3D version of her out of beads and a side nudging from GraniteFire to do so as well. Alicia may see a Christmas recoloring in her future!

Another side project that's popped up is one I'm going to leave as a surprise until I figure out what to do with it. Mom bought me a new doll to experiment beading onto and, well, basically I'm having myself a little Christmas early and am quite excited to see how she'll fit in with my other plans for Barbie or Tonner sized dolls.

A side event has occurred which has me on edge. My laptop seems to be having hard drive issues. I've done some extensive research into the problem and, essentially, once it starts failing it's only a matter of when. As I write this I'm making a backup of the entire thing seeing as my laptop has become so important to my day to day, as well as my business! All my photos of all my past artwork and everything, not to mention all the other fun stuff like game data I need to rescue before the ship sinks! This all said, I may be having my StitchingPirates crew take over for me if things explode so that the group still has submissions running smoothly. I can run Etsy mostly from my iPad, so I won't feel the need to close shop, but the group is something I can't handle until dA releases its app.

Hope all is well with the rest of you,
Pinky
Ashley Mae