I'm off again and new class scheduled

I'm heading up to Dallas where I'll be teaching one of the techniques from my book to a group of shop owners on Saturday night and Sunday teach the start of a new Rebecca Wood Designs' Easter Series.

I'll be at the Enriched Stitch June 14-16, 2013 teaching Noses, Roses and Other Fun Stuff , Melissa Shirley's Rosey Cupcake and a one day embellishment class at the Enriched Stitch in Wilton, CT contact the shop at 203-210-5107 for more information.   

I'm a traveling fool

Just got back from teaching Noses, Roses and Other Fun Stuff at Atlanta Needlepoint.  What a delightful group of ladies.  Can't wait to go back again.  The class is based on my new book and is a notebook class.  We had 2 full days of fun learning and getting to know each other.  Here's a picture of some of the students working on their canvas.  Denise, the owner of Atlanta Needlepoint, is talking about having me back to teach another one of my classes "How to write your own stitch guide" where we are going to learn about picking canvases, stitches and threads to develop your own stitch guide.  I'll also be teaching a one-day project class so watch for more information.

I had a tough time at night deciding where I was going for dinner.  Since I live in a small town with only a Whataburger and love different kinds of food, it was really hard to walk out of my hotel room and see a fish restaurant, Greek and two American restaurants within a block.  Ended up going to Buckhead Dinner one night.  I thought it was going to be a real dinner so imagine my surprise to see white coated waiters.  It was tough making a decision but after telling the waiter to come back 3 times, I finally decided and it was delicious.  Then back to the hotel where the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies and popped popcorn tempted me more.  Thoroughly stuffed I went back to my room to stitch.  Needless to say I was one happy person.

Going to go up to Austin tomorrow for the Needlepoint National Facebook group Texas gathering.  It will be fun to meet people whose name I've seen on Facebook.

Well off to pack my bags.

Thank you Robbin for catching my zip code error and telling me how to fix it.  Hopefully, I've managed to contact everyone that I gave the wrong Zip code to.  Haven't lived in Houston for 3 years, haven't made that mistake in a while.  Must be all the excitement lately.

Blue Bonnet Studio and book

Took my new book Noses, Roses and Other Fun Stuff to Blue Bonnet Studio where Mary Alice was nice enough to sell it for me.  It was very well received and I was even asked to autograph a copy.  I'm really excited.  I wasn't very sure how it would go over so I didn't have very many printed, but there should be more from the printer soon.  I contacted everyone privately on Facebook, who inquired about the book.

Here's the information for everyone who is interested:


Noses, Roses and Other Fun Stuff will sell direct for $32 plus postage and handling of $4.00 for regular mail and $6.00 for priority mail.  Residents in Texas should include $2.65 for sales tax.

Send to Cynthia Thomas, 408 Native Oak St., Ingram, TX  78025

Shop owners may contact me for wholesale pricing:   needleartisan@hotmail.com

Starting to get things in from market for stitching, so I'll be sharing some of those things.

Had to include a stop at a favorite stop for a chocoholic Berdoll's Pecans, just outside of Bastrop.  I'm so proud of myself.  I didn't purchase any chocolate, just fresh tomatoes.  (I won't mention that I already have two bags of dark chocolate covered toffee at home, that I'm rationing 1 per day limit).

Off to TNNA Market

It's been a fun day kitting everything up for the TNNA market.  The problem with teaching 3 classes is that's a lot of kits. I'll be doing Jolly for Princess and Me; Snow Night for Melissa Prince Designs and the December Baby Cakes for Rebecca Wood.

Jolly

Snowy Night

Baby Cakes - Christmas

I've been busy finishing up the stitch guide for Melissa Shirley's 866 - 12 Days of Christmas Angels stitch guides.  Can't decide what angels is my favorite.  Maybe 3 French Hens.  The idea was to have the paint on the skirts show through to provide shading.

I'm busy working on another set of canvases for Melissa I'll post more later.















I sent off a Christmas stocking stitch guide for Elizabeth Turner Collection, so I'm interested in talking to Meredith at market and see what she though.

Shelly Tribbey tells me that the skeleton canvas made up into a really cute pillow.  I can't wait to see it at market, she has the greatest finisher.  The beading on the skulls on the outside took over 1 night each but they were well worth it.  I guess they made up for how fast the stitching went on the rest of the piece.

Finished proofing the copy for my stitch guides to appear in Needlepoint Now in the July/August issue.  They are Rebecca Wood Baby Cakes.

Well, time to go stitch.

Goofy Ghouls - old draft

This is one of the old blogs which I left in draft form.  I'm going to go ahead and post this because she is one of my favorite pieces.  The series in out now and you can see it on Rebecca's website and sign up through you participating shops.  I really liked the witch but the other pieces were great fun also.

I got permission from Rebecca Wood to post a picture of this fun series we are working on called Goofy Ghouls Halloween Club. It is going to consist of 6 pieces and we'll introduce it at the January TNNA market in Phoenix. I've only got 3 of the pieces so far. Wackie Witchie is the first piece. I think the nose and the spider are my favorite parts but I thought her hat brim was interesting also, it is 3-d.

I knew when I saw the piece that I wanted those two elements to stand out. Sometimes it's really tough to wait until the piece is finished to add those little touches.

Cindy

Hi

Please don't faint!  I know it's been a while since I posted.  To be really honest I find that I would much rather stitch than work on the computer, I guess some of that is a hang over from my job when I use to spend up to 14 hours a day working on a computer.  I keep trying to be better.

I've been stitching away, I had 48 stitch guides come out at the January market.  You can see a lot of them on Rebecca Wood's website.  I really like the way they did the Nativity in the basket.

One of the fun projects I did for January (although they were all fun) was a butterfly for A Collection of Designs.  Since I didn't have to write a stitchguide for it I kind of went crazy.  I had great fun attaching flatback Swarovski Crystals for the "eyes" on the wings setting them inside Jessica stitches.  I did learn you have to keep the canvas flat until the glue dries or the crystals slide, also learned that you can remove the crystals without damaging the canvas but it was a scary process because they don't come off easily.  At least now I don't have to worry that they would fall off at the slightest touch.   Janet used it as an insert in a purse, the lights at market sparkled off the crystals.

One of my new projects for the June market was this Shelly Tribbey skull.  Seems like Day of the Dead canvases are going to be popular this year.  It's hard to tell from this picture but all of the skulls around the edge are beaded.  It took a while but I think it was well worth the effort.  The beading made up for how fast the rest of it went, the skull in the center was done in Kreinik #8 032 in a Kennan stitch and let the gray paint show through for the shading.  My students always look at me funny when I tell them to forget shading snow and let the paint show through the thread.  I find this works well on Kreinik, Crystal Braid and Caron Snow.

Cindy

PS  Just realized I had written some blogs which I left as a draft so I'll review those and maybe post if they are still of interest.