Where'd She Get That Phone?!?

I am super excited! My iPhone finally has a snazzy home.  I have seen these cases around, here and here, and loved them.  I finally ordered one (I have no idea what took me so long!) and spent the past few days laying out my design.  

I had a lot of fun with my colored pencils and graph paper.  

I am really in to argyle and geometrics at the moment and I’m loving all things nautical so I really wanted to work those two together.  What I ended up with is the notion that I need waaay more than just one of these cases. The design I decided to stitch was my 11th idea. Yikes!

As usual, when I went diving through my floss to pick my colors I got overwhelmed so I turned to my go to color guide Design Seeds.  Have you guys come across this yet? 

OMG I love it! The photographs are beautiful and the color palettes are stunning.  I have a pinterest board specifically set up just for this website.  I love it! No surprise here, but I found the perfect color combination for my project!

I drew up some chevrons, stripes, diamonds and argyles and ultimately decided on my diamonds.  It reminded me of a true basic cross stitch and I liked it most because I could use all the colors that I wanted to! I purposely moved the repeat of the design off the center just to make the edges a little more interesting. My first design included ecru borders but you really couldn't see it against the white case and I had also drawn the orange diamonds to be tight x's like the blues but when stitched it just looked too dense. I went back to the drawing board, added some white negative space and opened up the orange to be every other stitch and got what I was looking for.  It took a lot longer to stitch up than I had anticipated but I am really happy with the result!

I can't wait to be that person when I whip out my phone and show off! ;)

As always thanks for stopping by!

Aaaand have a safe and happy Easter!

~Leah 

A Great Way to Greet the Day

I live in a space with lots of funny angles and slopped ceilings which means that I don't have a ton of tall wall space.  It makes decorating a little difficult since in some places standard frames don't fit so well or the shadows/light is really bad so what I want to put up doesn't get the view it deserves.  One of these such spaces is where I hung my latest finish.

I have always been a fan of Dame Edna and when I saw this pattern by Serious Floss I just had to have it! Sometimes buying my patterns online makes me nervous (I've gotten a few duds) but I was willing to risk it on this one.  I modified the colors just a little bit to match my existing paint job and used some seed beads that I had on hand instead of the metallic thread and I just love it!

See what I mean about an odd little spot! Its actually right in my sight line when I wake up in the morning so it is almost always the very first thing see so it makes for a great start to the day.

Here she is up close and personal, I used some silver gray ribbon to dress up my hoop.

There are so many great patterns out there now that are fun, modern and very wallet friendly and I have found some new designers (well new to me) lately and am very excited for my next couple of projects.  

I'm on a little bit of a roll at the moment so I hope to have more to show you soon.  

Until then, thanks for stopping by and happy stitching!

~Leah