Cross Stitch for Christmas

I wanted to do something really special for the holidays this year.  It can be difficult to create gifts sometimes, or maybe that is just my perspective.  I mean, how many dreamcatchers can you give someone?  So I am always looking to do new things.  I used to do cross stitch when I was younger, so when I saw these dishtowels in WalMart that had a customizing panel on them...perfect!  But what I didn't figure was the difficulty of trying to come up with a design to put on them.  So after half a notebook of graph paper and a few sacrificed pencils I came up with two designs to go to two very close people in my life.

So the hardest part was done, now it was just the time consuming stitching.  It ended up to be kind of a meditative process, but the best was still being able to look at the finished product.

Though I highly doubt this will become a running thing in my line of work, it was definitely a lot of fun to make.  I may consider creating custom designs in the future, but the construction takes too long compared to a lot of other work that I do.

If you're looking to do your own cross stitch as a gift, remind them that because of the delicate stitching it is only to be hand-washed and not put into a washing machine!

Adorable Turtle

Turtles are known as one of the great healer medicines. It is said that all healers have turtles and badgers and frogs in their totems.  We have a few turtles at the museum that I help care for, and it's amusing to see how their personalities differ.  They start to recognize those that come to feed them, and when I bring the sponge to scrub their shells.

On a completely different note, I've decided to go back to trying to see how painting animals would go without a background.  I'm not quite sure if I like the background or the feather pattern better.  But I'll probably do a little bit of both here and there.

Painted Earrings

I knew I could do detailed paintings, but I wanted to try something a little more affordable.  Detailed paintings take a lot of work and patience, I don't even want to think about doing perfect, or close to perfect pairings for a set of earrings!  So I did some simple designs.  I did some similar type quick designs for the 2010 Frisco Powwow, so when my mother sent me a pack of chicken feathers, it seemed the logical solution!

Later on, I was invited to vend at a Pagan Pride Day in Central NC, so while I did my normal native-ish designs, I added a little bit more of the typical pagan design to some of them.