My First Mermaid

First things first, My Memories Suite Giveaway winner

• Melanie

I'll be sending you the code to download your free My Memories Suite software shortly. Thank you for entering.

Once again, I've been busy round robin stitching. In this instance, it's Leslie's Mirabilia Mermaids RR. Here's the square seashell I contributed.

Design: Shimmering Mermaid

Designer: Mirabilia

Fabric: 32 count Silkweaver Redyed Opalescent Belfast

Fibers: DMC & Kreinik Metallic

Embelishment: Mill Hill Beads

That's right, Leslie redyed the Silkweaver fabric that she received as it was too fushia and purple to suit this project. Amazing result, eh?

I certainly think so. That's one yummy fabric which goes pefectly with mermaids. Love Jacqueline's Mermaid of Atlantis too.

I picked Shimmering Mermaid because I think she has one of the sweetest face Nora has ever designed. Can you believe she's the first mermaid I've ever stitched?

She has quite an amount of glitter on such a small portion. How much more would she sparkle in full? That question is tempting me to stitch her again. Must resist...

On to the next and also last RR of this round. What will I stitch? Care to guess? ^.^

Winners & Giveaway

It's time to announce the winners for my pincushion giveaway :D I truly did not expect this many participants. Thank you for entering. Random.org has spoken:

(Click to bigify)

And here are the two winners:

• Sally
• Catherine

Congratulations, ladies. Please email me your address so I could send those pincushions out to you as soon as possible. Those that didn't win, fret not, I have more giveaways lined up for you. In fact, scroll down for another giveaway right at this post.

Before I mention the giveaway however, please let me show you what I've been up to. I've been busy working on Jaqueline's Mirabilia round robin.

Design: Garden Beauty
Designer: Mirabilia
Fabric: 28 count Polstitches Jobelan
Fibers: DMC
Embelishment: Mill Hill Beads

I've only seen three finishes of her so far. I think she deserves to be stitched. After all, she is pretty, don't you agree? However, I admit that I did give her a slight nose job ^.^

Unsurprisingly, with the amount of confetti stitches she has, (darn roses!) frogs plagued me from the beginning till the end :(

Only a little beading on her so she's not as blingy as other Mirabilia designs but overall, I'm happy.

Here's Jackie's RR so far. I think the fabric is real pretty and perfect for it.

On to the giveaway.

I was given a free copy of My Memories Suite over a month ago (Aiks!) to use and review. It was only today that I managed to find the time to try it out. Sorry Liz!

Installing it was a breeze. Unless you're like me and didn't have Quicktime installed on your computer. After I had that installed, I was good to go as the software needs it to run.

Loading My Memories Suite for the first time, I was greeted with easy-to-follow instructions to create a new album. Once that was done, I was taken to an interface rather similar to Adobe Photoshop. I got the hang of it pretty easily and was immediately immersed in it.

Everything is pretty much self-explained. It was all trial and error for me. Don't like the result? Just undo and try again.

I figured I'll use my previous Garden Beauty photos as my basis for this review. You know, similar content, different approach? These are what I accomplished in a few hours.

My first try. Is it just me or does this have a retro feel to it? LOL! It must be the black lace, me thinks.

Second effort. Wavy stitches are the bomb, in my opinion :P

Third time's the charm. I'm in love with those flowers. Fitting companions to Garden Beauty.

What do you think? Which is your favourite?

I couldn't resist playing with Stargazer as well, my favourite finish to-date. I was going for the dramatic here. Did I achieve it?

So, would you like to win your own copy of My Memories Suite? All you need to do is:

• Check out My Memories.
• Leave a comment telling me which is your favourite kit.

The deadline to enter this giveaway is 25 September 2012, ten days from today. The winner will be selected at random. Good luck to all who enter.

Pincushion Exchange

Where has August flown to? In the blink of an eye, it's already September.

First and foremost, I need to apologize to my fellow bloggers. I'm so behind in visiting your blogs that I have no idea how I'm gonna catch up. My Google Reader is exploding with 1000+ unread posts. I think I just might clear it and start over.

Let's see, what have I been up to? I was pretty much incapacitated by migraines near the end of July to the first half of August. For some reason, during that period, my migraines intensified from once or twice per month to once a week, lasting two to three days each time. It wasn't pleasant to say the least. All this while, doctors have only given me painkillers which didn't help much, if at all. Finally, I went to the hospital and was prescribed Metoprolol. The pain stopped and once again, I can function like a normal person again. Thank God!
As a result, I don't have much to show. First off, here's my TUSAL update. My ort jar is posed with the Coca-Cola Olympic glasses offered by Macdonald's. I managed to collect them all and meant to post this in August. That didn't happen. Sigh! Best laid plans and all :P

I did, however, participated in NNC's Pincushion Exchange. My partner was Bee Ee (no blog) and she sent me not one but three pincushions along with a cut of fabric. Lovely, aren't they?

For my part, I went on a Cathedral Window Pincushion making craze and ended up with a stack of four.

I think they're so pretty. Do you agree with me?

This is the one I picked to sent to Sally.

I sure hope she likes it. I gave one to my mum too ^.^

And guess what? For returning to visit my long neglected blog and sticking till the end of this post, I have two more to give away.

Just leave a comment letting me know you'd like to be included. That's all. Winners will be drawn on 15 September 2012.

Also, watch out for My Memories Suite giveaway next post. I've been given two free copies. One for me and the other for you :D Now if only I could find the time to play with it. It sure looks fun.

Happy Stitching!