Cross-Stitch Christmas Gifts...Complete!

If you are not into crafts or cross-stitch in particular...you may want to skip this post.  It will bore you immensely.  I put so much work into these projects that I want to share them in my tiny corner of the blogosphere.  You can also visit the "Cross-Stich" page (click on it above) to see more of my stuff...but only if you're even mildly interested.

This week I finished up some cross-stitch projects that are Christmas gifts for the boys and my nieces.  Three of them were ornaments – they were completed in June, but not “finished” (as in mounted).

Here they are, all mounted and ready to give:

I am currently hiding the ornaments from the boys.  They just want to play with them (plus they are for Christmas, anyway) - and they don't understand that the ornaments are not like the toy cars they have.  They cannot launch them off the coffee table and they certainly cannot baptize them in their wading pool! 

The bookmark below is for my niece Isabelle, who loves to read…a little bookworm, just like her Aunt Kim was (and still is).  I finished the stitching on Wednesday evening, and then "finished" it last night.  I am not too happy with the mounting…well here it is and I’ll explain why:

I cut the purple felt that it is mounted on way too close around the edges – the border is not wide enough.That is the sign of my inexperience with a rotary cutter. In my attempts to make the border straight, I ended up cutting off too much of it.  Hopefully Isabelle, who is eight years old, will not mind.

I love the colors!

I can’t help it, I love that caterpillar perched on the side of the flower stem.  He is adorable.

Now if I could just finish my Harvest Apples piece…that will not happen before the end of August, I am sure. Not with our upcoming trip to Kansas, all the daily busy-ness with the boys, and Crop Club stuff I need to get done.  Oh well!  It is fun to work on so I guess the fun will just be extended.  Though I have so many other cross-stitch projects that I am excited to start; it is difficult to settle down and just work on one.  But I'll be disciplined.  Well, I'll try to be.  I'll let you know how it goes.