The Crabby Beader

Suzanne at Hugs and Stitches is totally covering her latest canvas in beads. She has some great ideas, like using double-sided tape to hold her various bead colors in the margin of the canvas, and she is doing tent stitch beading for the crab to make it stand out a bit from the brick stitch beaded background.
http://suzannehicks.blogspot.com/2016/02/still-beading.html

 Note that she is adding more blues to the water to give it motion and is using three types of beading--adding beads to a brick stitch, adding beads to a tent stitch and "messy" beading.  Suzanne's explanation of the various bead and beading thread colors she used is very interesting.
http://suzannehicks.blogspot.com/2016/03/beaded-blue-crab.html

You can see the entire canvas here.  It is from Point of It All Designs.
http://suzannehicks.blogspot.com/2016/02/hello.html

If you decided to try this, I suggest you start with a small canvas.  A canvas totally covered in beads is very very heavy.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright February 23, 2016 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

No Flying Monkeys: What's in YOUR Background?

The No Flying Monkeys canvas is a tabula rasa when it comes to the background, isn't it?  The feet are up in the air unsupported, while the lettering floats above.  This means we can do anything we want as long as the stitch is small scale enough that compensation around the letters isn't hard.  Check out what Mary Waldsmith did for her penguins stocking.  I'm going to do something similar, but what?
http://owlstitchery.blogspot.com/2015/04/adding-background-to-painted-canvas.html

I started to think about what the witch's feet were resting on.  Two possibilities came to mind.  Her legs were propped up on a footstool or her heels rest on a railing or chair rail.  Hummmm....

A chair rail could be broad enough for me to create a decorative band with flying monkeys across it....

Or I could put flying monkeys on a footstool.  The footstool has the added advantage of creating two background areas--one under the legs and one on the wall where the lettering is.  I could do something fancy and larger scale on the footstool and then work a smaller scale pattern on the "wall" around the letters.

I had not put my canvas on stretcher bars yet, so I used one of my stretcher bars to take photos of my canvas showing several positions for a dividing line on the canvas.  Here they are--

The higher bar on the left is where I thought heels would rest on a chair rail on a wall while the lower bar on the right is where I thought the edge of a footstool would be.  I think a footstool space looks better.  But then I consulted a stitching friend who thought the footstool looks better lower down, nearer her calves.  Like this--

Hope you can see this.  I think it is better, although I will put the footstool area up a bit higher, but not as high as in the other two photographs.  Now all I need are two stitches for the two background areas-- one for the footstool and one for the wall, both of which have to look ok with the stripes on the stockings.

Any ideas?

Remember, I am collecting the links as I blog stitch this Point of It All Designs piece and posting them in a tab on the CH Stitch Guides blog.  You can catch up on what you missed by going there--just click on the flying carpet photo to magically be transported to my other blog and then back again.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright April 19, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.

No Flying Monkeys: Choosing Colors

No Flying Monkeys,
From Point of It All Designs

The first thing I do before I start a canvas is analyze what is in the design.  If you take a good look at the canvas I am going to blog-stitch, you'll see it is mostly black and white and red, with touches of gray (along the stockings and martini glass) and gold (shoe buckles) plus the flesh color of the hand and the green of the martini olives.

The background is nonexistent.  The design is mostly the legs and shoes and hand with the lettering floating in the background.   My first decision is what color to make the background.  With black and white and gray being neutrals, I think my main colors are red and green.  What goes well with red and green?  (I had already decided that using either red or green in the background would make the red shoes or the green olives disappear, so I wanted a third color.)

To answer that, I used Adobe's online color triad tool.  Spin the central arms so that one is on red and one is on green and the answer is medium blue.

http://tinyurl.com/nlneh48

Note that you can change the number of colors you are playing with on the left side of the website, but since I have two colors and want a third, I used the Triad.  

Next I called Lori at The Waste Knot and told her I had a 13 count canvas and wanted 2-3 shades of a medium blue thread for the background.  I sent Lori the picture above and told her to surprise me with the type of thread she sent.  (Hey!  This blog is called the Chilly Hollow Needlepoint Adventure for a reason.  I love to stitch dangerously! LOL)  Lori sent me three shades of blue Splendor silk floss and a cream to match.  I raided my stash and came up with this--

Thread Possibilities for No Flying Monkeys

Lori's blue and cream Splendor cards are on the left side near the red flat backed crystals from The Collection.  Under them on the left is a card of pink Flair, then working to the lower right corner you see green Petite Silk Lame Braid and red Entice, three shades of lovely reds in High Cotton next to red sequins from The Collection, two spools of Kreinik's new quarter inch ribbons in two shades of gold, more High Cotton, this time in black and white, and two spools of Prescencia's gray perle cotton since I'm not certain if I want darker or lighter gray to outline the legs.  I don't know yet what I'll use from this selection or if I'll find another thread,  but it's good to have some choices laid out.  Once you start making decisions for a canvas, it gets easier as the possibilities narrow as you work.  I'm also probably going to use clear Swarovski bicones but they are pretty small and easy to lose and also don't photograph well, so they were not included in the photograph.

Next time I need to talk about all that empty background.  Stay tuned!  

Remember, I'm collecting the links for my blog stitching of this piece on the Chilly Hollow Stitch Guides blog.  As I publish my steps each Friday, I'll put the links there so everything is in one place.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
and at http://chstitchguides.blogspot.com
© Copyright April 19, 2015 Jane M. Wood. All rights reserved.