Gift

This is my latest embroidery project. Surprise it's another tea towel...I really need a Micheal's run! I'm very pleased how this sweet little kitty turned out.
This little gal is a birthday gift my wonderful mother in law, who by the way reads this blog sometimes. (Hi Judy, please forget you saw this!!) I love giving her stuff I make because she actually appreciates it. She also loves cats so when I saw this pattern I immediately thought of her. I'm planning on making a few more with similar patterns to complete the set. She's fostering a whole mess of abandoned kitties right now. So, if you live in Southwestern Ontario and are looking for a kitty leave me a comment and I can hook you up!

I've been scrapping up a storm lately but don't have anything to share just yet. Most of it's half finished or not photographed or top-secret!
Next week I'm working a million and half hours so I won't be around much to play...sigh. Also, on Friday I officially become middle aged...yikes!

Art therapy

Well that title is a bit of a misnomer. I'm not an artist. Just a slightly crazy chick who likes to make stuff... a lot.
I recently started playing along with A Year in the Life of an Art Journal after discovering it in on Glenda Tkalac's blog. I've never done any art journaling before but have wanted to for a long time. It's very freeing to create something just for me. And I'll never turn down free therapy either!
The first prompt was about what is holding us back in our art. I carried the idea a bit further to encompass how I tend to talk myself out of taking any risks in life. Here's my first attempt at Art Journaling:
I'm not giving up the day job just yet.

Winter photos

Yesterday Sid had a playdate at a friend's house so I found myself with a little, unexpected free time and a new bouquet of tulips. The light was lovely...for January so I fooled around with my camera a little. Yes, the dial actually was not set on AUTO or PORTRAIT for a change. Here's the result:

Thud!

That was the sound of my mother falling over in shock.
Yes, the girl who literally sewed her thumb to her pencil case project in grade seven has taken up stitchin'.
I've been embroidering on my layouts for sometime but it took Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching to really get me hooked on giving fabric a try (pun intended....sorry).
Here's my first official project (well my first real project looks like Sid did it in her spare time during kindergarten, so this is the first one I'll show publicly).

This a cheap tea towel and it desperately needs ironing but I like it. It's going to be a blanket for Sid's doll once I french knot some more sprinkles on the cupcakes.
In more scrappy related news I did my first two layouts of 2010. Both were for the new Page Maps call at Scrapbook and Cards today magazine. I did one paper and one digi. It's been a very long time since I used photoshop to scrap and it felt great. I much prefer the digi layout and it took a quarter of the time. Of course it's only existence will be on my computer if I never get around to having it printed.

Top ten of 2009 (picture heavy post...sorry)

Many scrappy bloggers are posting their top ten layouts of the last year. I just went through my layout photos and it was pretty interesting.
- In 2009, I barely did any digi-scrapping, which used to be my number one hobby.
- In 2009, I started many layouts but did not finish them.
- In 2009, I didn't photograph many layouts.
- My absolute favourite layout I can't share as it got picked up by Canadian Scrapbooker Magazine.
So with out further delay, here's my top ten picks for 2009: (click on any photo to see it larger)