Pretty Glass Jars

   These past weeks I've been gathering glass jars to use in my craft room. I considered buying mason jars but then I thought about it and realized that MANY of the things I buy in the grocery store come in useful glass jars. I've gathered four until now, but there are more waiting to be cleaned. Being the crafter that I am I knew I wanted to make them cuter and I wanted them to look like a set so I spray painted all the lids with purple paint. Here is the result:

   I've seen many craft rooms with cute little jars full with colorful things. I have yet to decide what I'm going to put in mine but I think I'll use a few as banks and make cute labels to organize my savings. A little bit inspired by Dainty Squid's.

2nd Embroidery

   When I got home with my new supplies I knew I wanted to do something right away. I started searching for reference on flowers and nature. I wanted to do something simple but cute so I decided I wanted a flower and a butterfly. This is what I came up with.

   I drew this on white linen, then I selected a few floss colors, some were DMC and some were Prism. Then I proceeded to embroider in a organic way, I just let the lines of the drawing tell me what stitches should be used.

   This is how it turned out after I damped the fabric to take off the water erasable pen. I loved doing this a lot so get ready to see more embroidery in this blog. The outer fabric is tucked below the hoop that's why you can see shadows on the fabric.

   A close-up of the most interesting area of the embroidery.

New Supplies!

   I've been thinking a lot on my first embroidery try; I loved it. I wanted to share with you the new supplies I got to keep the flame burning.

   I got new hoops in different sizes, some DMC floss in new colors and plastic bobbins to wind floss. I also got double sided iron-on interfacing as the girl behind Design Crafty suggested in my last post so I can incorporate some embroidery appliques in my purses. The basket is now home to my fabric scraps and the measure tape was bought because it is 120 inches. How cool is that?

1st Embroidery

   The other day I was browsing around Pinterest and found a link to this AWESOME blog, which is really a huge tutorial on embroidery. It was the kick I needed to finally start giving some baby steps on my embroidery adventure. So after many hours that went by too fast, sore fingers, a scrap of floral fabric and many yards of floss:

   This was done in a 6" hoop. I cut a piece of fabric, framed it in the hoop and started reading the blog trying to find stitches that would suit the shapes of the flowers. I tried to use as many stitches that would look good together so I could practice.

   There you can see some of the detail. How do you think I did? What do you think I should fix/improve? Don't be shy, I really want to know. :D

   That would be the fabric that I used for the embroidery, I wanted to use printed fabric because I wanted to have a pattern to follow until I learn to draw my own patterns. It is upholstery fabric that I found in my local fabric shop. I love the large scale print and the flowers. I thought it would be the perfect fabric for my first embroidery.

I'm really happy I tried it, now I'm in love.

A Sneak Peek

   Just a quick note to let you know I'm back on track with my sewing projects. The first thing I finished is part of something I promised to a friend. I'll show you full pictures when I finish the set.

Flickr Favorites

1. honestly... 2. Hippy Spirit 3. Welcome to my village! 4. pretty petal clutch - Explored 5. Flower Garden Cross-Body Bag 6. Chegou!!!!!! Organizador de Bolsa Selma Behrens ! Uma preciosidade 7. Colette Patterns Violet in Black Gingham 8. Scrappy Stack Mug Rug 9. Let Them Eat Cake - for Jenny

Fantastic Food + Fabric

   Lately, I've had some delicious food, so delicious that I felt the need of sharing the pictures of what I ate this week. I'll start with the 1st food of which I have photo. That would be the oatmeal pancakes with banana and strawberry marmalade topping that my partner cooked for me as breakfast.

   They were so good that I asked for them the next morning too. On Wednesday we were craving sushi so we went to a Japanese restaurant that some people recommended. They said that they were kind of sweet and that the portions were big. We were like, Why not?

   So we ordered 3 rolls, this was the first. It was Surf -n- Turf, which had shrimp tempura, cream cheese and avocado topped with filet mignon.

   This was the second and the most delicious roll I've ever tasted. The Midori Roll, which had shrimp tempura, cream cheese and avocado topped with king crab, seaweed and a delicious Midori sauce.

   And last but not least, this was the 3rd. This was a Crazy Roll, it had shrimp and cream cheese, (believe it or not I just realized that all of this day's rolls had shrimp and cream cheese) it was covered in tempura and deep fried, this process made the nori (the seaweed that wraps the roll) very tasty and crunchy. The topping sauces are sweetened soy and spicy mayo.

   Then today we wanted to have a delicious dessert, so we made these brownie cups with different fillings like, nutella, peanut butter and marshmallow. We found the recipe here a few days ago and thought it was a super delicious idea that we had to try ourselves. Ours turned out different mainly because we didn't want to put chips on them. Let me tell you that they were DELICIOUS, my favorites were the ones with marshmallow. The only issue we had is that our batter turned out to be more than enough for making 48 cups, and now we don't know what to do with the rest of them. I guess that my partner is going to have to give them away at work.

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   Last week I bought these fabrics, the purple one is gauze and the turquoise is linen. I bought them mainly because they were at a really good price and because I really want to add a different color to my blouse when I make it. These are the 2 options I have. What do you think?

*This blog post is part of the Weekend Bloggy Reading Party at Serenity Now.