Back in love with cross stitch...

I know I said things like "CROSS STITCH IS SUPER BORING" and stuff like that, but I was wrong! I've fallen back in love with it again. Sometimes I need some structure in my life...



I had a cute ice cream cones pattern, and couldn't resist the urge to make drug references. I'm classy.

I stitched this while watching episode after episode of Twin Peaks... and now I'm working on a cross stitch based on The Shining... haha. You'll see!

!!!! Holy shit...

A couple of things I've discovered recently that have made me lose my shit a little...

CAKELAND by Scott Hove:



THERE ARE NO VIRGINS IN RIVERDALE by Mark J Mulroney:





Stephen J Shanabrook casts gory death scenes/pieces in chocolate

Recent stuff.

Recently I was featured on my favourite embroidery blog on the internet, Mr X Stitch! I'm so excited and proud to be featured among some amazing contemporary textile artists... find the link here!

Other things I've been up to recently:


Patch for a bag... chain stitch obsessive!


Embroidered shirt, featuring an illustration from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast Of Champions (which is a great book, by the way).


Patch for a shirt, I'm a David Foster Wallace nerd... READ INFINITE JEST.


For my friend Flick's birthday.


"And he
woke up screaming,
having dreamed
of a colour he
had never seen
before"
- from the song An Animated Description Of Mr Maps by The Books.

xo

The toughest thing about selling resin jewellery online...

Is that there are SO many people doing it right now - and they're all copying off the most popular sellers. Exact copies of pendants, directly ripping off ideas, etc. And of course the copies aren't as good as the originals, and are half the price.

Anyway, for now I've started selling some jewels in my pal Chloe's Etsy shop AWESOME EXPRESS. I really need to list some more stuff, promote more... but I'm off to have a drink. Before I go, here are links to the two items I've listed... so far.

orange amp

orange amp
Originally uploaded by pul(sew)idth

There are so many other things I could blog about right now, but I just saw this on Flickr and it's too amazing not to share!

One of my favourite things...

Random craft epiphanies. I just had one about resin!

Genetically Engineered Bouquet.

The latest embroidery I've actually finished. I've dubbed it "Genetically Engeneered Bouquet".

Recently, I've swapped from cross stitch to embroidery. There's just so much more room to move... not restricted by all those rigid squares - not that I didn't take my liberties with cross stitch. Embroidery offers me so much more flexibility - more stitches (although I've only really been obsessively using chain stitch, satin stitch, back stitch and a semi-detatched stitch that I can't remember the name of), and my ideas are much easier to just draw on the fabric and get going, rather than having to map it all out (and inevitably miss out cross stitches and fuck the whole thing up anyway).

Here's a look at my little embroidery/cross stitch wall next to my bed, featuring Francis Bacon postcards from the Tate...



Also, I can't help but add this, anyone who watched Sesame Street as a kid should remember this....

Recent inspiration... & a cross stitch!

This is my last night living at my parents house, I'm feeling good, taking my last opportunity to drink my dad's beer. I can't wait to have my own space again, to create constantly, and not just waste time looking at gorgeous pictures... with that said, here are some amazing/inspiring/just generally rad pictures I've found on flickr in the last couple of days... click on the links to go to the original pages...

& to finish, my latest cross stitch I've uploaded to flickr...


xoxoxoxo

Items of insane cuteness I've received in the mail this week...

To be resinated... except maybe for the mini deer, I want to make some kind of intense diorama featuring millions of those guys! I'm going to (FINALLY) be opening an Etsy shop this week or next, selling my resin jewels!

(click for bigger pictures, duh!)





(see something you're interested in? Let me know!)

Things are super exciting right now, I'm moving back into inner Brisbane this week (finally in West End, joining the Slaughterhaus crew), where I'll have a room big enough to turn into half a studio area!

I get to play bridesmaid one more time today, at my brother & new sister's Australian reception! Should be a fun time had by all. Then, this week I plan to shave half my head or something ridiculous like that... my life is finally getting kickstarted again, and it's v exciting!

Maybe an explanation as to why I have 'writer's block' here...

Quoting myself...

"People react badly to the truth, whether it be about themselves, or the people they think they know...
I think being veiled by anonymity is the only way you (I, we) can speak exactly what is on your mind without others taking things personally..."

Quick Update

I'm in London (Wembley, but driving to Liverpool today), I went to the Tate Modern yesterday & fell in love with Francis Bacon; his paintings gave me a feeling I haven't felt since I first saw Eraserhead... a kind of unexplainable transfixion & feeling of ... understanding... it's more like an internal shifting of gears, with an almost audible click that makes me feel unsettlingly more complete. Amazing. The Tate has an amazing body of works, with an enormous amount of surrealist art. I couldn't really sleep last night because I couldn't stop thinking about everything I saw... Can't wait to go home and be able to create again.

Also, yesterday I fucking saw the TARDIS. In real terms, outside Earl's Court tube station they have and old blue police box, which I was a little too excited seeing.

Budapest has been my favourite city on this trip, it's beautiful. Seeing the sights of Paris & London felt like looking through postcards (apart from the Parisian Catacombs which were awe inspiring), but before my trip I knew next to nothing & had no expectations about Budapest, but it's amazing & definitely somewhere I'll be going back to many times.

So far I have an enormous amount of photos to post to Flickr... but that will have to wait til I get home. It's 9 days til my brother's wedding!

Rome was also beautiful, seeing the Colosseum & Roman Forum were wicked unreal. xox

New resin mini-batch!

Small lists of movies.

Books & movies are really my main obsessions (outside creating), music being a close third.

Here's a list of movies I've watched recently that I reallyreally enjoyed, in no particular order (well, as I think of them):

1. Yojimbo, 1961, directed by Akira Kurosawa. My latest full blown obsession is Kurosawa films starring Toshiro Mifune.

"I'm not dying yet. I have to kill quite a few men first."

2. 8 1/2, 1963, directed by Federico Fellini.

"You see, what stands out at a first reading is the lack of a central issue or a philosophical stance. That makes the film a chain of gratuitous episodes which may even be amusing in their ambivalent realism. You wonder, what is the director really trying to do? Make us think? Scare us? That ploy betrays a basic lack of poetic inspiration."

(Fellini attached a note to himself below the camera's eyepiece (when filming) which read, "Remember, this is a comedy.")

.. x

Cross-stitched Anti-Valentines!

Anti-Valentine for Tastyfake
Originally uploaded by liviaincognito

Oli's anti-valentine for me, isn't she sweet? Hehe. I loves it, but I forgot to take it home in my hungover haze the next morn!


And my anti-valentine for her, which I forgot to photograph
before giving it to her!

Childhood Sunset collage etc

Finished collage. Click for larger image.

Some fun stuff I got in the mail yesterday:

xoxoxox

Clitter!

!!!!!!!

Other amusements today/yesterday/whenever:

From My Unfinished Doctoral Dissertation on Breakfast Cereals By Dave Frye (from McSweeney's, which I read entirely too much of)
Scrapiteria (interesting collage blog with quirky stories to go with them)
Tada's Revolution (cute & hilarious photography of stuffed bears/pandas. This carjacking one is my favourite!)
Totally Severe Embroidery (seriously fucking amazing embroidery, I think the Star Trek one is my fave)