Monday, October 15, 2012

Something Extra

Something funny happened the other night when my husband and I were looking at the painting of Beauty and the Beast falling in love as it's original.  We use this painting as one of our backgrounds on our computer and my husband and I discovered 5 extra characters from other Disney movies. 4 of them are kind of easy the 5th is pretty hard.  :)  I might post hints later.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Beauty and the Beast Falling in Love

(the original print by Thomas Kinkade)

For my birthday my husband got me a Thomas kinkade cross stitch from the Disney dreams collection.  I'm out of College for the summer and it is a good long project. (It took me so long to get this posted that I'm actually about to go back)  Even with all the free time it will probably still take me a year. :) For the noncross stitchers the kit comes with a canvas measuring 20" x 16", the instructions (a picture with symbols to represent the colors), thread, a needle, three cards with the colors organized on them, and a legend for the symbols.

The finished product will be 16" x 12".  To start I found the center of the canvas by folding it into fourths and started working from the point where the lines intersect.  Unfortunately the most prominate color at the center on the diagram was a light off white color that just happened to be the exact same color as the canvas.  This picture doesn't show that very well because of the flash.

I started in the upper left area of the diagram and intended to work left to right then move to the bottom half.  My progress was very slow because I was having trouble seeing the color I had already worked.  I would look at the diagram, then count to the spot, look and count again to be sure I had it right, then when I was ready to move to a new area I would have to count both on the diagram and on the canvas about 3 times to be sure I had it right.  After much frustration I happened to be complaining to my sister about it.  She is also a crafter (it runs in the family) she suggested using a pencil to mark the canvas with the pattern.  With much joy (and some envy, wish I'd thought of that) I set to work marking a small section.  After working the area I realized that since the thread color was so light the pencil discolored the thread slightly.
                     (the ones on the left margin are the actual color, the ones on the right are the discolored)
It was only noticeable when in direct comparison with the first part I worked, but I decided to try a favorite pen of my husbands anyway.  Blue with a very fine point.  It did the trick so I went ahead and marked the entire canvas (cringe here).
                                                     (small section of the pattern)
Seeing the pattern on the canvas was great and I was able to finish the enter color in 2 days.  It was the next day as I was preparing for the second color that I realized that an area was a few spaces off.  I pulled it out (which takes just as long as putting it in) and was getting ready to redo it when I realized that more was wrong than I originally thought.  (exasperated sigh here)  So I counted all the stitches again and found where I went wrong.  Thankfully it was only in the last of the 4 squares, the bottom right to be exact.  After entertaining the notion of leaving it for about half a second I dutifully pulled the rest out.  Sadly after the set back I couldn't look at the project for about 2 weeks.  (lesson learned, small portions next time, because I'm sure there will be a next time).  When I picked it back up I looked off the diagram but since the mistake was consistent it wasn't to difficult to refinish the area in about a day, and with much relief was able to move on.