Gifted Gorgeousness projects

Our Serendipitous friend, Jo, is hosting a Gifted Gorgeousness SAL this year.  As she notes, we all have received gorgeous gifts, giveaways etc from other stitchers and this SAL is to encourage us to actually stitch them!  Follow the link to her blog to get the full rules.

I have been gifted or otherwise given quite a few things and have pulled some from my stash to work on this year.  Some of these are also going to form part of my DSDUCJC starts too.

I don't have a photo of Penguin Parade but just imagine a line of penguins!  The fabric was gifted to me by Jo.

gifted the chart and button

gifted the chart

gifted the chart

gifted the chart

gifted the chart

gifted the chart

gifted a gift certificate which I used to buy some of the threads

gifted the chart

As Jo is Queen of Shoehorning, I feel quite justified in saying that this fits the Gifted Gorgeousness by being something gorgeous that I will be gifting to Colin's parents in April.  That's my theory...and I'm sticking to it! (edited:  Argggghhhh...just re-read the rules and Jo has already allowed this...rats!)

A recent finish

More finishes?  What is that woman up to I hear you cry?  I can also hear the thud of you all fainting.

This is the exchange piece that I sent to Mary for our Friendly Stitchers exchange.  We both chose a summer theme (as opposed to a 4th of July or Canada Day one).  This is the bottom section of Summer Sampler by The Victoria Sampler.  It is SO cute and I will (one day) stitch the whole thing for myself.

Barring 4 french knots, I have also finished Santa's House by CCN which is the first of the Santa's Village series. It only took me 18 months!!

Arrrrggggggghhhhhhhh

Feeling really, really fed up and in need of serious help!

I have stitched up, beaded and buttoned my Gingerbread Cupcake that Annette was so kind to send me all the embellishments for but...I can't assemble it!  Every time I do anything with it, it just looks like I have screwed up the fabric and dumped it in the cupcake case.  Annette's looks lovely...someone else's I saw on a blog looks lovely...mine? Like a 2 year old had a bad day. Feeling really annoyed with myself as I really want it on the tree!

BTW - the actual stitching, beading etc looks lovely!

So these top photos are of it 'shoved' into the cupcase mould.  I am wondering if adding more batting would do the trick.  I have to say it does actually look better in these pictures than it does in real life.

The next two are what it looks like minus the cupcake mould to show how much batting is added.

Nicola's 'tuffet'

Borrowed from Nicola's blog as I forgot to take a photo before sending .
Thanks Nicola!

This is the little tuffet/biscornu I chose for Nicola when she won my giveaway.  In the information she gave me she said she liked The Victoria Sampler, the colour red, speciality stitches and hearts.  I found this on The Victoria Sampler in the freebie section.  I chose colours and kept my fingers crossed - I think they work together.  The only change I had to make was where the red beads are should have have been a bullion knot which I had never done before and when I tried they looked more the start of a bird's nest. I really enjoyed stitching this and I'm so glad that Nicola liked it.