I Heart Handmade Continues!

Friends! If you haven't done a little handcrafted valentine themed shopping, check out IndieHandmade's I Heart Handmade Valentine Market. Lots of promotions are featured including free shipping on MANY items.

Check out their blog to see some yummy goodies on their "love list" and click on the image to zip over to the I Heart Handmade Blog where you can click to shop for each of these cool items.

Hoot! at FoundHandmade & A Valentine Treasury

Oh, to be featured in a treasury! It always makes my day. Always!! On top of that, a feature on the FoundHandmade Blog featuring owls. Hoot!


There we are in the top left corner... among a dazzling array of so cool owl goodies. I currently have about 12 tabs of etsy owl goodies open right now so that I can take a closer look at these beauties.

FoundHandmade is a fun way to quickly shop for a ton of fun goodies all at once. All you have to do is scroll over the little boxes to see larger photos of the items. It's like playing Minesweeper but shopping for handmade goodies instead of trying not to get blown up. Go here to see what I mean.

This fun heart-themed treasury has my stickers in it but look at those cookies!! I love to see something of mine featured among such talented handmade artists. Visit this treasury's designer trecivettesulcomo 's Etsy shop to see an impressive assortment of vintage and new buttons (my weakness).

Thank you FoundHandmade and trecivettesulcomo for taking the time to include my products on your websites.

Free Card, Just Because

Enjoy!

Pink Week Giveaway!

The lovely Teresa from Blooming on Bainbridge is hosting a fun week of giveaways with a "pink" theme. Her goodies include several Crab Apple items among lots of other cute things. Please visit her Pink Week Giveaway and show her some love!

I Heart Handmade

Wowee! Visit I Heart Handmade's Valentine Market. All of the shops are offering special promotions. My shop is offering FREE SHIPPING, as are several of the others. Amazing! Please take the time to shop around, it is definitely worth it. Thank you!! x0 melissa

Cupcake Embroidery Part 3

As promised, here is an update on turning cupcake coloring book pages into embroidery patterns and then actually doing the embroidery part!

See my previous post for the original pattern and for the transfer pattern.

For this pattern, I traced the image on tracing paper.



I used supplies from Jenny Hart's Stitch-It Kit...


I trimmed the pattern and pinned it down onto the lovely fabric included in the kit...




I used a split stitch for the letters and a back stitch for the cupcake bottom...all done within an episode of Days of Our Lives...

After removing the tracing paper, the cupcake "stump" is complete!


Next step is to finish up this little project by embroidering the frosting....an update with photos in my next post.

How to Turn a Jpeg into an Embroidery Pattern

Here is a nice link to a tutorial to follow by ReginaE of Ehow with directions on how to convert a jpeg image into an embroidery pattern. Note: transfer paper is on the supply list.

I used my version of Photoshop Elements to convert one of the cupcakes from last week's pattern into a transfer image.


This image can be printed on iron on transfer paper for light colors and used as a template. I'm going to try it and will post pictures of how it's going! Will also try it with plain ole tracing paper, too.

Freebie: Cupcake Coloring Page & Embroidery Pattern

Super-cool Jennifer Perkins of The Naughty Secretary Club offers a Crafty Business Seminar at Stitch Lab in Austin, TX. As a present to myself, I finally decided to go for it and take her class. It was A-W-E-S-O-M-E.

She suggested that coloring book pages could also be embroidery templates. That idea totally blew my mind. So this week, my goal is to embroider something using one of my coloring pages.

Here is a free cupcake embroidery pattern for you (formerly known as a coloring page). Send me a picture of your work and I'll post it RIGHT HERE! Let's promise to do it by January 31, K?
xo-m

Will you join me in trying this? Might I suggest this extra fun kit available from Sublime Stitching to help get you started?