Bee's Knees Industries

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Tutorial: Embroidering with Sequins

A few years back, I started making new felt ornaments for my tree every holiday season. Last year, I discovered sequins, and now I'm hooked. They just add so much fun holiday sparkle and cheer! Making felt ornaments with them is easy as pie.

I have a tutorial for using sequins over at the &Stitches blog. This month's theme is Shiny, so be sure to check out some of the other posts, too. There are so many fun ideas for holiday crafting!

Embroidery Pattern: Stumpwork Ghost & Tombstone

This month, the crew over at &Stitches have been working with the theme of stumpwork. If you're not familiar, stumpwork is a collection of embroidery techniques that produce some really fun three-dimensional results.

Since my project is for the end of the month, I figured it was late enough to get started on Halloween-themed crafting, so I created this wired ghost popping out of a tombstone. The PDF has a tutorial for the stumpwork technique you'll need, but you can also check the stumpwork tag on &Stitches to see more great tutorials. Head over to the blog to get the pattern to create your own!

Files:
• Download the Stumpwork Ghost at the &Stitches blog (PDF) - prints on 8.5" x 11" paper

Pillow Dolls

I'm working to get ready for BlytheCon this weekend, and I've been trying to think of some non-Blythe items that Blythe enthusiasts might enjoy. My first thought was pillow dolls, so I took a few illustrations I have made and had them printed at Spoonflower to make into little pillows.

My favorite is definitely the cat fairy, and she's going to get scaled up soon to make a full-size throw pillow. I have a few other Fantasticats that I may work into little dolls, too. They're just so much cuter when you can snuggle them!

Right now, these are all headed to Vancouver for BlytheCon, but I'll add some to the shop when I get back next week.

I hope to see some of you in Canada! Please stop by and say hi if you're there!

Wedding Invitations

I'm very excited to share with you my latest DIY project: my wedding invitations! These were quite the labor of love for me. I was completely stuck on ideas until last week, when we started working on hand lettering in the MATS class. I made a T that I really liked, and it all rolled from there.

(Sorry for the blur, but, you know, privacy and stuff.)

Other than the hand-lettered details, all the text was created using Poetica, my go-to super-fancy font. It's a great font for this sort of project because it has about 20 variations, with different swash capitals, ligatures, and ampersands to customize the look to your liking.

The invitations and RSVP cards were printed at Vistaprint. Their service and quality was really great for the price, and I was happy that they do very short runs of cards, since I really don't need 250 invitations.

The rest of the presentation came from Paper Source. I remember being a young art student, wandering that store in downtown Chicago, pretending to buy supplies for class while daydreaming about my future wedding. And yesterday I finally had the chance to fulfill the daydream! They have a tremendous selection of envelopes to match any size or color you have in mind, and I was completely smitten by these mossy green lovelies.

The gold seals are punched using my trusty Martha Stewart punch and Paper Source's gold label sheets. I like this option since it leaves me with plenty of extra gold to decorate the event.

I thought about printing address labels for the envelopes, but in the end, this tutorial inspired me to try my hand at some calligraphy. I've been playing around with a Noodler's Creaper flex nib pen lately, so I used that to letter the envelopes.

I hope you enjoy this little peek into my wedding planning process. I'm hoping to share more about it as we get closer to the date. It's fun to use all my new skills for such a personal project that I get to share with my loved ones.

&Stitches: Stitching with Human Hair

Over at &Stitches, we have chosen a different theme for each month this year. In June, the theme was No Floss Allowed, where we each chose a non-embroidery-floss medium to stitch. The gals that write the blog with me were kind enough to let me try out a strange medium I've wanted to work with for a while: my own hair. You can read about my experience over here!

&Stitches: Natural Dye Tutorial Roundup

I have a roundup of some fun natural dye tutorials today on &Stitches to kick off both our historical techniques series and our monthly color theme.

Have you ever tried natural dyes? What's your favorite process?

Shop Update: Embroidery Kits

I'm so excited to share a new item in my shop: embroidery kits. I've long wanted to find a way to offer my embroidery patterns in brick & mortar stores, and I love anything that helps bring more people over the dark side of embroidery. (Maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh!)

Each kit comes with pre-printed fabric, embroidery floss, an embroidery needle, a wooden hoop, and a booklet of instructions to get you started.

I'm hard at work on a few more designs, but I'm all ears if anyone has any special requests. I'm hoping these kits will allow people to try embroidery with more confidence since they eliminate the need to trace the design and allow you to dive right into the stitches.

You can find these kits here in my shop.

Spin the Bin 2015

I had so much fun with my Completely Twisted & Arbitrary spin-along last year that I decided on a much larger spin-along for this year. The challenge is to name twelve items in your fiber stash (one for each month) and spin them by the end of the year. These are the photos from my declaration post where we all show our fiber (I'm not spinning Lydia, though...) and the bin that we use to store it (or Very Sophisticated Paper Sack, if you prefer).

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I'll actually finish my bin according to the rules, but I love the drive to spin more often. It's something I really enjoy but don't always find the time to do. Having a clear challenge with an end goal in mind helps keep me on task.

Even if I don't finish, I've already spun more than I did by this time last year. Above, you can see me (well, my right leg, anyways) spinning on New Year's Day with a couple of helpers, and I've already finished one yarn and have made good progress on a second.

Have you set any fun and creative challenges for yourself this year?

Tutorial: Blending Colors with Seed Stitch

I have a new tutorial up today on &Stitches on blending colors with small stitches. I had never really tried this sort of technique until I was commissioned to create a piece with embroidered gradients in text. After playing around with it a little bit, I got the hang of it, and I wanted to share what I learned with the &Stitches crew.

Check out the tutorial here.

Such Shiba

Before a very dear friend added a Shiba Inu to her family, I had never heard of the doge meme. Now it's one of my favorite sources of internet humor. So when that friend asked me to do a portrait of her sweet pooch, an embroidered image of her puppy surrounded by Comic Sans immediately popped into my head. I finally got around to finishing the embroidery just before the holidays last year, and I figured it was time to share it here.

In case you need a doge embroidery of your very own, I created an embroidery pattern, too!

From Start to Finish

When Oregon weather turns cold and gray, I need a boost of cozy color. Luckily, I have the perfect hobby to fill that need: spinning. I've been playing along on Ravelry lately with the group Completely Twisted & Arbitrary. It's a great group to keep your spinning mojo going because they have regular spin-alongs with different themes throughout the year.

This is what I spun up for the most recent spin-along.

It all begins with the group receiving the same colorway from a guest dyer. This one is from Two if by Hand. Each spin-along has a few different choices, and I couldn't resist this fun combination of turquoise and orange.

We all post pictures of our progress as we get going. (Lovingly called "bobbin porn" since we all enjoy ogling.)

A bit more bobbin porn as we complete our singles.

It's important to show scale for these things so we can all get a sense of one another's work from afar. Most people use pennies or other coins, but I figured a moldy jack-o-lantern would work just as well.

And the finished product! Yes, I know I'm technically supposed to knit this yarn into a finished object, but I've always been the type to assume my bin of handspun is finished enough. Maybe someday I'll knit through it all. Maybe.

You can see more of the (nerdy) details of this yarn on my Ravelry page and browse around to see what everyone else has been spinning, too.

How do you folks like to stay motivated? Do you have any favorite online groups that keep your creativity flowing?

Printable: Blythe Holiday Cards

In the spirit of my last-minute holiday gift preparation, I have a printable for holiday cards and envelopes, in 1/6 scale, of course. You can choose from a reindeer, a North Pole elf, a pine tree gal, or, my favorite, Krampus.

Files:
• Download the Blythe Holiday Cards here (PDF) - prints on 8.5" x 11" paper
• Set your printer to photo quality for best printing
• Use regular printer paper for the envelopes and heavy cardstock for the cards

Who will you send your holiday cards to?

(Dolly couture by my good friend Maggie of Parasol Doll.)

Printable: Elf House Gift Box

I have this troublesome charming habit of creating all sorts of bits and bobs and completely forgetting to share them with the world. And here's another prime example.

A few years back, Mollie of Wild Olive asked me to create a printable for a blog party she was hosting. An image of a tiny gift box shaped like an elf's house popped into my head and wouldn't leave until I drew it. I thought it would be perfect to share now for any last-minute gift wrapping anyone might be doing. (I'll have a couple more projects for that over the next couple of days, too!)

Having a few additional years of experience with printables has helped me refine this design, though. I have found that the boxes stay shut much better if you cut a little slit in each of the tabs on the top to slide together as a more effective "latch" for the house. Aha, procrastination pays off!

Files:

• Download the Elf House Gift box from Mollie's site here (PDF) - prints on 8.5" x 11" paper
• Set your printer to photo quality for best printing
• Use heavy cardstock

What will you give in your little elf house gift box?

Ugly Xmas Sweater Cat

I had a mostly failed attempt this year to dress the entire family (me, Tony, and our three furbabies) in ugly Christmas sweaters for a fun holiday card. Turns out, putting a sweater on a bunny is tough!

Instead, I created this embroidery pattern of an ugly Christmas sweater, using nine of my favorite stitches, to share on the &Stitches blog. You can find the free pattern and links to tutorials for each of the stitches at &Stitches today!