A Giveaway!

Well, it seems, once again, that I have not been keeping this poor, neglected place updated. So, in order to give it some new life, I've decided to have a little giveaway!

Since my original idea of embroidering my sock monkey design onto card, I've since been embroidering them onto actual cards, and so, have decided to giveaway a set of 5 lovely cards, to a) make sure I check on my blog, and b) advertise the fact that said monkey cards are now available for sale in my Etsy shop!

These cards are blank inside, for your own message (although I think they'd make awesome invitation cards, or thank you cards...or even 'I just wanted to say hi' note cards!) and they are stamped on the back with the initials DHD (for DriaHades Designs).







To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post, saying what colours you think the embroidered monkeys would look good in! This will close on Friday August 14th, so you have 2 whole weeks to enter! After that, the names will go in a hat, and I'll get my lovely boyfriend to pick one out!

So...enjoy!

Embroidered Monkeys

I've been playing around with the idea of embroidering sock monkeys on to things for a while, since I first doodled one, and then the idea suddenly hit me the other day to embroider them onto card. I plan to use them for thankyou notes, monkey birth certificates and perhaps gift cards, but I think they probably need a little more tweaking!



And this is a monkey I finished last night, who has been named Splodge.


I'm also taking part in two mini-swap type things with some friends, which should keep me busy and hopefully creative. I'm having a plushie swap with one friend, and with the other we've decided to swap something crafty with a broad heading of 'it has to be stripy'! So that should hopefully inspire me somewhat!

Big Catch Up!

I have the internet back at home! Hooray! And that means a big catch up post of everything I've made while the internet has been down!

First up: Cross Stitch.

I made a post a while back about the two big cross stitches I was working on. Without internet to distract me in the evenings, I've got some more of the Looney Tunes one done:



Next up: Embroidery

I had an idea a while ago about embroidering things on the back of underwear. And now I've done some:







I'd like some opinions on these - not so much the designs, as I was just playing around, but ideas, thoughts, constructive criticisms - I'm pondering whether to sell them, but don't know whether they would sell.

And then we have sock creatures:

I made 2 monkeys and a bunny that were sent off around the world this week, which I stupidly forgot to take pictures of first. One was a monkey for my step-sister's birthday, made from socks with pink and sparkly hearts on them, and the other was a monkey made of fluffy socks for my friends in Finland. The bunny went to Finland too - he was made from black socks with purple red polkadots!

I did make another bunny though, which my boyfriend has now claimed as the girlfriend for his other bunny. He has named her Violet, and here he is holding her:


And finally...(getting there, I promise!) Today is my lovely boyfriend 34th birthday. And so we went to Legoland! We both love Lego! Whilst there, we bought:

The Kraken Attackin' Lego Pirates set (put together by me!):


Lego Minifig shaped cookie cutters (for when I make Gingerbread!):


And a really cool Lego bag (I have a major thing for handbags of all shapes and sizes!)


The boyfriend also bought a mini Lego Bulldozer, but I haven't taken a picture of it!

Oh, and before I forget - my monkey swap present arrived too. It's a gorgeous little monkey from Mel over at Felt Me Up. He also came with a really cute banana:




And I'm now taking part in Meri's 50's B Movie swap!

Woooow, that was a long post!

First Embroidery Attempt

Embroidery is something I've wanted to have a go at since I was a little girl. I've been cross stitching since I was about 8 years old and I guess I've wanted to embroider since then too. I always thought it was so delicate and pretty.

After some pointers from the lovely people over at Crafter...oo, I looked at some links, and did a few practice stitches:



And once I thought I'd got the hang of it, I decided that I was going to actually try and make something pretty! I had an old t-shirt lying around; one which I loved the pattern on and so was loathe to throw away (it didn't fit!!), and so I decided to attempt to embroider around the pattern:



Here's a close up of the Dragon's head:



And of the flower:



Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, and I think it's a pretty good first attempt. There are a few bits that I'm not too happy about, and would change if I had the chance, but I guess it's all a learning curve!