June Cottage Progress and a Giveaway!

I've been plugging along on the June Cottage making a few color changes to the original color palette. The house is now red instead of white and has different color frames as well. I think it's a nice change as now it reminds me of a chocolate covered strawberry!

Now if you like my dandy black polka dot q-snap cover and would like one of your own plus some other great stuff I'm having a giveaway! I'm including a pack of DMC Variegated thread, a Bent Creek chart "Harvest" and a hand made swarovski fob made by me! I also want to mention that the Q-snap cover (8x8) is made by a wonderful seller on Ebay trulyin2stitching (not affiliated or recieving anything from the seller just like their stuff!).

To enter please leave a comment including your email, link my giveaway to your blog if you have one and if you like my blog feel free to join up! The winner will be chosen by random number and another person will win just a q-snap cover as a runner up giveaway. Spread the word! You have till June 1st at midnight PST to enter. I'll post the winner June 2.

I wanted to add I've finished my June Cottage and that if I get 50 people to enter I'll add a cross stitch book to the Giveaway pack. You don't have to have your own blog to enter just leave a comment if you don't and you'll be entered. Spread the word and good luck!

April Cottage Finish

This one went too fast! I struggled through March being sick for most of the time I was stitching. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you aren't coughing all the time.
I had a lot of fun with this one. I changed the border and did a one over egg in place of the pink flowers. I used Weeks Dye Works Celebration, one strand for the eggs.

I also changed the roof and used Weeks Dye Works Cocoa for the browns throughout. I flipped the clouds because I felt like they look like they were upside down. The shadow on the house is DMC 210, and the window frames I changed from brown to DMC 208. The darkest purple is Weeks Dye Works Purple Majesty. I'm really looking forward to getting May Cottage which I'm not changing anything! Probably...lol.

My husband took this shot this morning as he was heading for work. We've had dark and rainy days and this was so pretty as the sun was shining through the trees as it came up.

March isn't even here yet but...

I've already assembled my floss toss. I found the list of flosses called for on ABC Stitch Therapy where I'm getting the auto ship of the cottages. March is on it's way and I can't wait to start on it, with a few changes. Here is the original floss toss...

The prescribed colors are okay, for some reason I had it my head that the greens were a bit greener in the sample photo. The pink I thought was more peach, which after February I was actually liking the peach color. So I made a few substitutions that I think I will stick with when I start stitching. Here is my alternative floss toss...

I've swapped out 3347 for Weeks Dye Works Envy, as well as swapping 3348 the lighter green for DMC 704. I thought they were a bit brighter. For the pink DMC 947 I switched to DMC 352 which is much more peachy than pink which I like. The DMC 744 is now swapped out for DMC Variations 4100 which still has some yellow but also some of the same peach colors as the DMC 352. I kept the WDW Pecan and the white and dark DMC 3031. These may change if I start stitching and it seems off but hopefully they'll come together the way I'm hoping.

I also made a start on my Ink Circles Love Letters Art Nouveau. I participate on their SAL Blog and had fallen off a couple of months stitching Cottages. When March gets here I'll just rotate.

January Cottage of the Month Finish!

Just a few more stitches and it's all done! I still have to mount it to a board and finish it to hang. I have a wood perpetual calendar that needs to be painted but till then I'll keep these to make into hanging boards. I love this series and I can't wait to get March. I'll start February today I think.

 Details of the snowflakes. The second one is a bit blurry but it shows the sparkles.

The snowman has a bit of shine as well as I used a bit of DMC 5727 white pearlescent thread. I don't recommend it for this only in that it was super hard to work with. It was far stiffer than the Glissen Gloss Rainbow blending thread in #000. That was easy to use as most blending threads are.

Latest project..

Just finished my latest project and I really like how it came out. I designed it myself with the help of Microsoft Word, Word Art and printed it out, traced it on fabric with a transfer pen and voila! I used just some plain white cotton fabric and two DMC variagated threads in green and purple (two strands). I basically just played with different stitches and this is how it came out. I still need to get better pics these were off my phone..