WhatTheCraft Handmade Giveaway – Flying Aardvark necklace

This week’s WhatTheCraft Giveaway is sponsored by Sophia of Flying Aardvark, who is offering a needle felted purple die necklace!

 The winner of this giveaway will receive:
purple die necklace
Valued at $35!

How long have you been doing Flying Aardvark?
Only a few months, but I’ve been needle felting and doing other crafts for years.

Is it a full-time or part-time endeavor?
Definitely part time, though I’d love to be able to do it full time.

Where do you find inspiration?
Nature, Friends, other fiber artists, but mainly I just start working and see where that takes me.

What is your favorite item you’ve ever made?
Without a doubt this:

It’s so fun, and when you jump around or dance it bounces and jingles!

If you had a million dollars, what’s the first handmade item you’d buy?
A pocket watch!

What’s your favorite breakfast cereal?
Fruit loops! I know they’re bad for me, but I can’t help it!

Want more?

Find more about Flying Aardvark here:
Shop
Twitter
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Giveaway Info:

Flying Aardvark is giving away a needle felted necklace.

There are lots of ways to enter, so even us lazy folk have a chance at winning!

This contest will close on September 10th at 11:59 PM EST. I will randomly select one winner after the contest closes.

You MUST comment on this post with your entries as you complete them.

If you do not comment, I will have no way to count your entries.
You can post a separate comment for each entry or
put all of your entries into one comment.

If you have Liked/Followed/etc. WhatTheCraft in previous giveaways,
you can still use that as entry, just comment saying you have done so.

Ways to Enter

On Facebook:
Please include your Facebook name in your comment

• “LIKE” WhatTheCraft on Facebook
• “LIKE” SmarmyClothes on Facebook
• Post a Facebook status update with a link to this giveaway
• Post a Facebook update with a link to your favorite item from Flying Aardvark

 

On Twitter:
Please include your Twitter name in your comment

• Follow Flying Aadvark on Twitter
  
• Follow WhatTheCraft on Twitter
• Follow SmarmyClothes on Twitter
• Retweet this tweet from your Twitter
• Tweet with a link to your favorite item from Flying Aardvark
  

 

Other Ways:

• Follow Flying Aardvark on Tumblr – include your Tumblr username in your comment
  
• Follow SmarmyClothes on Tumblr – include your Tumblr username in your comment
  
• Blog about this giveaway and/or about Flying Aardvark  - include a link to the post in your comment
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel – include your YouTube username in your comment

 

PLEASE make sure you include a valid email address on the comment form so I can get in touch with you if you win!

This giveaway will end at 11:59 PM EST on Saturday, September 10th, 2011.

Craftastic auctions on Ebay

I’ll be moving sometime in the not-so-distant future, and thus the pile of sewing machines in my house must be thinned. My Singer CE-200 embroidery / sewing machine combo is up on Ebay right now, so go check it out if you’re interested! It’s a great machine and the ONLY reason I’m selling it is because I have 8 machines and taking them all with me is really not an option. I know some crafty person out there will give it a good home!

It comes with lots of extras, like a boat load of thread, so you’ll be ready to embroider right out of the box.

I’m also attempting to thin out some of my SmarmyClothes stock, both because of the move and to make room for Halloween stock, so I’ve got a few one of a kind clothing auctions up as well (ahhhh, listing on Ebay makes me feel nostalgic!).

Fairytale Embroidery

This was my first big embroidery project. It’s from a few years ago, but I just realized I’d never shared it here.

Before this I embellished some pockets on a few pairs of jeans and I made a pouch for my brother that I embroidered last year, but this is the most elaborate project I’ve done.

Whenever I wanted to use something other than a straight stitch or satin stitch, I had to get out this 1970′s embroidery guide that was my mom’s and stare at the thing for 30 minutes before I figured out what the stupid drawings meant.

I intentionally didn’t keep track of my hours, because I didn’t want to know. But let’s just say I went through a whole season of Gilmore Girls DVDs (maybe a season and a half) while working on it, plus many, many hours on top of that. I started in November and finished in (eep!) July.

I probably started in September or October, intending it as a Xmas gift for my mom, but after 7 straight hours of embroidering on Xmas Eve, and many hours of work still needing to be done, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. There wasn’t much embroidery from January through the middle of July, but I busted my butt in the end because I wanted to finish it for my mom’s b-day, which is at the end of July.

This is what I used as my (quite literal) inspiration:

It’s from The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, a book my mom had when she was a kid and passed down to me.  She says she likes this particular illustration the most (though all of them in the book are really amazing.  I’d frame them all.) because the girl looks like me (it doesn’t).  For a while, she even had a crappy scanned and printed copy on the wall, which is what gave me the idea to do this in the first place.  The artist’s name is Adrienne Segur and the illustration goes with the store “The Seven Crow Princes”.

 

 

I did it on muslin… if I did it over again, I’d use something sturdier like canvas. Muslin would have been okay if it wasn’t quite so heavily stitched.
It’s about 11″ X 17″, which is pretty close to the illustration in the book.
Once the embroidery was done, I used colored pencils to paint/color the blank spots that were too big to fill in with stitches. Read more