Making the Best of a Failure

 Here we are nearing the end of May with everything warming up and my morning walks becoming more challenging because I can’t seem to get motivated enough to get out early enough to beat the heat. It is rapidly approaching the time of year in which I hibernate for months on end, reveling in the invention of air conditioning. So, how has my May gone, creatively speaking?

Let’s see. Illustration-wise I had a plan to create four full mermaid illustrations using a #mermay prompt list in Instagram and following the same plan I used for the iPad illustration I made and shared in last month’s blog entry. I would start it on a Sunday, work on it bit by bit through the week and hopefully finish it up within the week. And it worked! Well, it worked for two weeks and then I kind of dropped the ball. But, I do think it’s still a good way to approach creating a routine where where illustration/drawing practice is concerned. The combination of the scheduling detailed above and a challenge with a prompt from Instagram can, I think, really help to make my drawing practice more habitual and even though I’ve dropped the ball for the last two weeks, there’s no reason it can’t be picked right back up again. Here are the illustrations I came up with.

I’m really proud of this one. I began with the same basic idea as the sketch that I made last year that eventually became a sequined, stumpwork mermaid embroidery hoop art piece (see below), with the idea that this one might eventually become a model for another one of those. We’ll have to see about that, but the illustration itself, I really like. There are so many things I have yet to learn. I want to work more on shading and perspective and anatomy. But, oh how I love drawing swirly mermaid hair and I love the colors here.

This one, too, I’m very pleased with. I tried to create an actual scene, with motion and interaction between the characters—something that tells a story. I hope I did a decent job. I also went for thicker, darker linework, which I think gives it a more simplistic feel. And I think I’m getting better at drawing hands, so that’s nice.

Also, I had a new sticker made, which I haven’t done in quite a long time. I very much want to expand my sticker offerings, so I am making a commitment to set aside some money from each sale I get to invest in that as I come up with new designs. This one is made from my Airhead design (I showed you the hoop in last month’s blog entry and it has since sold).

And in embroidery news, for much of May I was working on my woven picot sunflower piece. This was/is a re-do of an older piece that sold (see below). I always wanted to give it another go, but with a second row of petals.

It had been a sufficiently long enough time that I forgot how tedious making woven picot flower petals was. But I have to say, my woven picot skills improved a lot over the first hoop.

You might look at that and wonder why it has no hoop. Well, here’s the thing. I had this totally brilliant idea that I was going to put some words on this piece, but the words would be hidden underneath the petals. So good! So brilliant! So, off to the internet I went in search of quotes about sunflowers. And I found the perfect quote: “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” It was attributed to Francis Hodgson Burnett and said to be in The Secret Garden. Not specifically about sunflowers, but it fit so perfectly! The message I was writing was hidden under the petals! It was secret! You had to look the right way to see it! 

The only problem was—that quote is not from the book, it’s from the movie. Could I have still used it? Eh. Maybe. I didn’t really want to stitch a quote from a forgettable 1993 movie I had never seen, to be honest. And I had already begun the stitching and written the words where they needed to be using a Frixion erasable pen. I could have pulled the stitches and erased the pen marks and found a new quote, yes. However, I have made a decision to *only* ever use Frixion heat-erasable pens when I will be fully covering the marks with stitching. These pens absolutely erase with the application of heat (I use a hair dryer), but they aren’t reliable in keeping the marks invisible. I have some pieces in which the marks came back after a while and I simply didn’t want to risk it.

So I made the decision to cut the sunflower out. I have tentative plans for this cut-out sunflower. It might be that I simply create another hoop with the same or different background fabric and transplant it to its new home. Or maybe I’ll make it a little bit extra. I haven’t fully decided. We shall see.

I’m glad to be taking the disappointment and failure that came from relying on the internet for a quote like a doofus and hopefully I will be able to turn that failure into something even better.

If you made it this far, as always, thanks for coming along and here is the newest coupon code for my 10% off in my Etsy shop: IFYOULOOKTHERIGHTWAY

April

 I’m just going to get this blog entry for April in at the very last moment. But that’s fine; I’ve written a blog post every month for three months straight and that’s something.

I saw something recently—a comic? An Instagram reel? I can’t remember—saying that the best part of being an artist is having an existential crisis every single day. I feel that. Wake up. Create some art. Question everything. Repeat.

Okay, creative update. What have I been making? I finished the two Zenheads hoops I talked about in my last blog, and I sold one of them. I also, on a whim, made a 4 inch botanical hoop that matches a couple of others already in my shop in different colors.

In adding these three hoops to my shop, I’ve created a few more “sets.” Some of them are the same design but in different colors (the botanical leaf design hoops and my roller skate Let’s Roll hoops) and some of them are different designs, but a similar theme (I have these three—now two—Zenheads hoops and I also have three Alice In Wonderland themed hoops.) I like the idea of themes and sets and I have always liked the idea of revisiting older designs and remaking them, either the same way, or with a variation. 

I started working on two new hoops this month: one is a revisiting of an older hoop (see?)—a sunflower stitched with woven picot petals to make it 3 dimensional—and the other is an abstract hoop stitched in pinks and yellows.

I am very much enjoying the pink and yellow one. I had prepped it a while back, but I couldn’t decide what to do with it. The colors reminded me of pink lemonade and so at one point I had the idea to attempt a thread painted glass of pink lemonade. That was a pretty daunting idea, so I thought I had settled on just making it a bunch of flowers, all in pinks and yellows, but that isn’t what I found myself doing. Instead I picked up some pink tapestry wool and couched it with yellow embroidery floss in a pleasing, swooshy, wavy line and I was off! I found that I had some variegated cotton perle thread in the perfect colors and I added that and so far this whole hoop has just felt like play and fun and messing around. And that’s, like, the perfect feeling to have when creating art. 

It’s not always achievable though. The sunflower is feeling a bit more tedious. Each petal is very repetitive and a little boring, especially after having done more than a few. Still, I like the piece a lot and I’ve already made one very like it, so I know where it’s going and familiarity is a good thing too.

As for non-embroidery art, I started a Draw This in Your Style challenge (original artist: rachel_winkle) on a Sunday and finished it up yesterday (Thursday). I really like how it turned out and I think I need to incorporate more dtiys challenges into my art routine. I’ve done them before, but even though I tend to save a lot of them to do later, I never seem to get around to it.

So, I can look at this and see many different areas where my skill does not quite meet the place where I want to be. But, at the same time, I also feel very pleased with it. I think what a dtiys challenge offers that’s most valuable is a place to start. So often I open up the iPad and create a blank page and then I’m just sitting there looking at it without any idea of what to do. And sometimes I’ll just start drawing for the sake of drawing, but inevitably, the same old things start flowing out of my head. But to begin from something that someone else has created means starting from an unfamiliar place, which can really jumpstart things and create new patterns in the brain. My version has the essence of the original, but in the end, it doesn’t really look the same at all. I’ll post this along with the original to Instagram sometime in the next week if you want to see a side-by-side, but you can search up the original artist and scroll back a bit in her feed to see hers if you want. 

And speaking of Instagram, I have realized that I very much need to change my relationship with it. I posted every day for 30 days straight and almost every one of those posts was a reel, but I hit a wall and got to a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore. It’s not the first time I’ve had a long streak like that and it’s also not the first time I’ve hit a wall after a certain point and just been unable to continue. So, I really need to pull it back a little and come up with a schedule that feels good, as well as to really ask myself what kind of posts I want to share. Because if I can’t do well with the kind of content I actually want to create, then there is really no point to Instagram at all and I’d do better to put my time and energy into some other way of sharing my art.

Anyway, that’s about it for this month, I think. I have a hoop to wrap up and package and send off to its new home (the rainbow cloudburst pictured in my last entry) and stitches to stitch and art that wants to be made. If you made it this far, thank you! The new coupon code (which is good from the publication of this blog entry until I put up the next one) is: STRAWBERRYLEMONADE

March-ish Update

 March is more than half over and I haven’t updated this blog. Oh well. To keep things positive I will remind myself that I am at least getting to it before March is completely over.

Before I get to what I consider the most important bit, I’m just going to write a bit about what I’ve been doing creatively for the past month or so. I embarked upon a 100 Days Challenge in which I intended to draw a face/portrait every day until I reach 100 faces drawn. There is an official 100 Days Challenge and it happens every year. I began mine on the proper day, but… I don’t want to say I fizzled out, because I do intend to pick it back up, but let’s just say that I have drawn a total of 9 faces and the challenge is currently on day… 26? I think? I never publicized it anywhere because it wasn’t something that I wanted to stress me out if I didn’t have anything I felt comfortable showing off or if I did exactly as I did and dropped the ball a bit. The thing about a dropped ball, though, is that you can pick it right back up. I can keep going until I get to 100 faces drawn and it doesn’t matter if I do it in 100 consecutive days. The point of the exercise, for me, is to improve at drawing faces/portraits and I actually think I am? Maybe? I’ll share some of them once I’ve gotten more under my belt. One thing I continually do not do, though, despite telling myself over and over to do it, is use a reference photo. I don’t know why. I guess it’s mostly laziness and not wanting to deal with that first step of actually finding a reference. So, I still want to add that to the mix.

In stitching news, I finished up another cloudburst hoop, which I was very pleased with. I absolutely love creating floofy, puffy, 3-d textured clouds, so these cloudburst hoops have become a dedicated section in my shop. I will definitely be making more and exploring new ways to make them.

I sketched up two designs to add to my “mindless” hoop/pattern that I wrote about last time. One features a woman’s head kind of opening up as if on hinges, revealing a planet and a shooting star inside, with the text “space case” written above her head. The other one will be called “airhead” and I’ll show you that when I’ve gotten more of it completed. This series of three will be called “Zenheads.”

And the last bit of stitching I have been working on leads right into my most important update. I had been working on (and I finished) this design:

The above is a photo of the second time I stitched this design and it is a bit of an improvement as I tweaked a few things. And I like it, but here is the thing. I created this design and this hoop as a part of my goal of creating 12 patterns this year. And, as it turns out, I had to have a heart-to-heart with myself about making patterns. 

Look, I have expressed a lot of ambivalence about making patterns from the very start. But I have pushed through it and continued on, telling myself that the problem was simply that I didn’t have enough experience with it and that’s why I was feeling a kind of drag and weight when I tried to make them. I figured once I streamlined the process enough—once I had my format down and could simply plug in the correct words or photos, I’d be fine. Well, it turns out that wasn’t the case. 

I was in the middle of writing this Stitch by Stitch pattern and had made some good progress when, a few mornings ago, I woke up with a migraine that laid me out for much of the day. With nothing much else to do, my mind began to circle around some of the things it likes to circle around, a big one being my creativity and my business (and by the way, can I just say how deeply uncomfortable it makes me feel to say “my business”? I feel like such a damn fraud, especially since, as it stands, my “business” doesn’t even really pay for itself). And I felt like I was hitting a wall every time I came up against the pattern question. 

I just don’t think I want to make them. 

I want to focus on making finished pieces, selling them, and improving my art in embroidery and non-embroidery ways. I will acknowledge that there is a small voice that pops up in my head that says, “Maybe you will want to make them later! Don’t rule it out!” (That voice is immediately followed by the voice of my mother saying, “Don’t be so wishy-washy, Stephanie!” I miss my mom so much, but she does live rent free in my head, so there’s that.)

For now, I’ve decided to back away from the pattern making. For the Stitch by Stitch pattern, I plan on offering it on my Ko-fi as a free (pay what you want, but 0 is okay) pattern, with only the transfer design and no instructions. There are a few tricky parts, but I have video of almost all of it that I could link to. And who’s to say that my way of approaching the stitching of each element is the only possible way? (You know, I think this is a huge part of the problem I have with writing patterns in the first place—I feel weird telling people how to do things.) For the series of what I’m calling Zenheads—since one of them already has a pattern, it will feel odd to not make patterns for the following two, but I haven’t really decided whether to make those patterns for purchase or just do as I will do for the Stitch by Stitch pattern and offer them for free. I’ll have to think about that. 

As for the patterns I already have, they will continue to remain available in my shop. I have tweaked the prices of those up and down over the time that I’ve had them, never really figuring out what was best. I’m lowering them all to $5 (4 for the simple one) and they will each have to reach a yearly threshold of sales to stay in the shop (haven’t decided on that number yet).

And in the meantime I am going to focus on the things that I truly want to focus on. At least until I feel like I need to have another heart-to-heart with myself. I do find that my creative journey requires near constant recalibrating when it comes to figuring out my own path, which is kind of a bummer, but I guess that’s just how it is.

Again, if you made it this far, thanks for reading! And if you’d like 10% off in my shop, my new code is: ZENHEADS49

February-ish Update

 Hello! Welcome to what I hope will become a semi-monthly update post!

First, just to get it out of the way, this semi-monthly update post is what I am doing instead of creating an email list. Which is a thing I really intended to do, but somehow wasn’t really feeling enthusiastic about. The bottom line is, my two main purposes for making an email list were to have a semi-regular update/newsletter-ish bit of writing and to have a semi-regular, ever-changing coupon code for my shop. Turns out, I can do both of those things with a blog and I have a blog and so here we are. I’m not taking the email list off the table for the future, though. I may feel differently at some point.

So on to the update bit! We’re a week and a few days into the second month of this new year, so I guess I’ll start by talking about my goals for this year. I try to keep them pretty loose. I am still learning things about myself when it comes to creativity and workflow and one of the things I’ve discovered is that hard and fast deadlines and me are a no go. (Hence why I am saying “semi-regular” about my future blog posts!)

So, I have long wanted to increase the number of embroidery patterns I have on offer. I wrote a bit about this last time I blogged here and I expressed frustration with how to approach pattern-writing. I really want to hit the right balance between too much information and not enough. I’m still working on it, but I do think I’m learning a lot about this process. My goal for the year is to create 12 embroidery patterns. That’s one per month, but I don’t want to push myself to release them in a one per month timeline. If I can end up with 12 more designs in my shop (making a total of 15 + 1 seasonal design) by the end of 2023, I’ll be very happy.

So, to that end, I’ve been working on this design.

This is an update to a hoop I made a couple of years ago (in the top left of the photo below), which I had always liked, but I didn’t like the satin stitch on the face. Some of the areas were too large to do satin stitch without ending up with some of the stitches looking wonky, so I wanted to try it again using long and short stitch. I also wanted to try it without the black outlines, which is something I’ve been trying to experiment with. Outlines are great, but sometimes it feels like I’m using them as a crutch and I’d rather use them as a style choice. So learning to not rely on them feels important.

Of course, as soon as I was done with the green and purple hatted cutie, I wanted to try out some variations and I made a second version, using tapestry wool for her hat and mittens to really up the faux knit look, and I tried a different skin tone and hair color. And, in doing so, it occurred to me that trying things out in different ways is something that I find really appealing! I incorporated the variations into the pattern (which, at the time of this writing is 95% finished), and I feel like I will probably lean into this tendency moving forward as well.

I’ve also created a pattern for a previous design (pictured below) and it’s a very simple one (in terms of stitching), but I’ve always loved this hoop, so it will be cool to have others stitch it if anyone so desires. 

And then I’m working on an embroidery-themed pattern as well. Once I’m finished writing that one, I’ll have three more patterns in the shop, doubling my current number, and I’ll be on track with my goal assuming I get all three done by the end of March.

As for actual hoops embroidered, there’s the previous two Cocoa Girls (that’s the name of the pattern: Cocoa Girl), one private commissioned hoop, and this cloudburst hoop. My goal in this area is to create between 6 and 24 original finished hoops this year for my shop (giving myself a wide range here-from one hoop every two months to 2 per month--as long as I land somewhere in that range, I'll be satisfied). I definitely want to continue to create embroidery art that doesn't have an associated pattern that goes along with it, because I love creating one of a kind pieces too.

My other goal is to make more room in my schedule for the other creative things I want to pursue: drawing, painting, digital art, and writing. I very much want to improve my drawing skills and I’m not going to be able to do that unless I devote some time to to it. I feel like I am forever making this a goal and forever falling short, but… there’s nothing to do but keep trying. So far, I’m finding it pretty hard to do. I have done such a great job of establishing a daily habit where embroidery is concerned and I don’t know why it is so hard to so the same with these other things. That said, I have filled one sketchbook spread and part of another. I’ve messed around with ink and colored pencils. I colored in a previous embroidery design on the iPad. And I wrote a few words, a couple of times. 

One of my potential tricks for trying to develop a habit for more regular drawing/painting/digital art and writing was to try making one day of the week be a Drawing Priority or Writing Priority day. Meaning, I had to open the sketchbook or pull out the paints or set the timer and free-write before I could do anything else creative that day (meaning: embroidery). It did work, for a bit, but I kind of let it go after a few weeks of it. I still think that plan has potential and I might try again.

Well, if you’ve made it this far, I thank you for reading my ramblings about my creative life. I’m placing the coupon code for my shop (10% off anything) below and it will be good until the next time I make a post like this, when I’ll make a new one. Oh, one other thing. One of the other reasons I wanted to have the email list that I am now aborting was that I wanted to give subscribers a head's up about shop updates. Just a day or two in advance to know that things were available, before I would announce it on Instagram. I've since realized that's just another layer of complexity in an already stressful process. I'm forever worrying about how and when I put my stuff in the shop and whether I should do it in groups or one at a time or blah blah blah. So, that part is going to have to go, but just know that, as of the imminent posting of this blog entry, I am on the verge of listing the previously spoken of patterns, the two Cocoa Girl hoops and the cloudburst hoop. 

Coupon Code for 10% off, from now until I next post here:

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