Your Future Lies Smoldering At The Feet Of The Robots

This is another nightmare with the glitter embroidery floss. I love the finish product but it took me forever. Every stitch was an argument. I thought working with the glitter floss was rough going when I was doing embroidery, but it was nothing compared to trying to wrestle it through 18 count cross stitch fabric.

Those of you who were In/Humanity fans or just hate robots, will appreciate the quote.  Once again, the sampler motif comes through for the classic grandma feeling.

My favorite part is the “Blip Bop Beep Boop” line towards the bottom. Not everyone notices it, but I think it is such a funny detail.

Robot Vs Dinosaur!

My friend Maddie and I have spent a bunch of our time making this merch case for The Van Buren Boys. They are close friends of hers and I am easily recruited for large craft projects, especially with one of my favorite people. I forgot what it is like to collaborate on a project. It has been a very long time, but since it was Maddie’s baby, I made a lot of  suggestions but didn’t push for anything.

Maddie found this suitcase at Room Service, one of my favorite vintage stores in town. 

We ripped out the inner lining and used spray adhesive to attach a new fabric. We left in the original purple ruffles. Maddie was worried it was going to be too girly with the rest of the plan, but in the end I am sure she was happy we left it in.

The shelf was probably the biggest pain. It is made out of balsa wood. We wanted to put some fancy, ornate trim for the edge, but we couldn’t find anything affordable. Walking around the craft-store I spotted some cording for upholstery and we glued that on the edge and the spray painted the whole thing gold. It is not exactly what I had in mind, but it works…it’s better than the plain edge.

I whipped out a cross-stitch for the sign, and Maddie crocheted a background for it.

This robot versus dinosaur diorama was the second most fun. I love fun. Maddie was so cute, she kept stressing that no one would recognize that they were fighting. I had to keep reassuring her that when robots and dinosaurs are together, they are automatically fighting. I stand by that.

We made the background with polymer clay. Maddie made the palm trees and I made the volcano.  It is hard to see in the picture but Maddie found glitter red clay for the lava. Yay!

We were originally going to make the prices sign match the band sign, but we didn’t. We made photo corned with fabric instead. 

I love the Martin Van Buren portrait. I love the frame we found for it. I love the gold paint. Love.

Rawr.

We already have more requests for merch cases.

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No Zombies

Cross-stitching is such an underrated craft. I am an avid cross-stitcher. I’ve been doing it on and off for four years or so. I’ve gotten to the point now that I can free hand my own designs, which is very helpful because like most younger crafters I like my projects laced with irony. Because they are so portable, I often like to take my projects up to the coffee shop and work.
Because I often make my own designs or at least make a lot of changes to pre-made designs I always keep tons of embroidery floss on hand. I tend to pick up a few new colors every time I am at the craft or fabric store. I almost solely use DMC (not to be confused with the classic punk band MDC) because the craft stores don’t carry the same color selection in Anchor. After lots of trial and error, I’ve come up with a great system for organizing the plethora of floss I’ve accumulated. I use the flat plastic bobbins and organize them in tackle boxes. They are not as pretty as the art supply boxes you can buy but far cheaper, in fact I inherited most of mine from my grandfather. I keep a few of the boxes with the thread organized by color and a few boxes organized by floss number. So I can easily find whatever color I need very quickly. It is also useful when working out color schemes for new designs.

I just got back one of my pieces from framing. I made it as a birthday present for my ex, someone who first inspired my zombie obsession with this lovely bit of advise…”If your girlfriend turns into a zombie, you have to kill her…with a chainsaw.” Unfortunately, the framing took so long I had to send his gifts off without it. And now that I have it in my possession…I don’t know if I want to let it go. I really love the gaudy gold frame with it. Oh…there is never enough irony. More, please.

I’ve done tons of variations of the “No Zombies Allowed” cross-stitch. The sampler theme is probably my favorite so far. It always reminds me of the classic “grandma” cross-stitch

Oh, here is a skull that I free handed to freshen up a rose border