I found Nepali stamps!

Hello again!  I am trying to live up to my word and post more here.  Anyways last month on the Martin Luther King Jr. American holiday, I took a trip to Durbar Square in the Patan neighborhood of Kathmandu.  This Durbar Square (there are three of them in the Kathmandu Valley which I learned when I went to the wrong one and missed my tour group) was in the Patan area.  Patan is one of the nicer, more affluent neighborhoods in Kathmandu and it also contains the Patan Museum.  My new friends and I actually discovered the museum by accident when I found the gift shop first.  

One of the first things that caught my eye in the shop were these beautiful hand carved wooden stamps.

It's been awhile since I've blogged about it but I really love to use rubber stamps to make cards so I was thrilled to find these beautiful Nepali stamps!  The top one is a lotus flower, the second row are mandala designs, then there is the eyes of Buddha (who was born in Nepal and "Buddha was born in Nepal" is a very popular bumper sticker on busses here in town), a mandala with Nepali characters, a temple image, and the number 30 with the sunburst which also represents Buddha.  

I decided to try them out the other day but unfortunately these hand carved wooden stamps don't work quite as well as rubber or plastic stamps with a stamp pad and paper...

But I am still happy I found them here and they've made their way into my stamp collection.  I may try using a paint brush to add paint to them and seeing if that will give me a better detailed image next time.  Does anyone out there have any other techniques or suggestions?  Thanks for sharing my crafting journey with me :)

First Finish of 2015!

Hello again!  Earlier this week I had my very first project finish for this year!  I came really close with Medieval Lady but my first actual finish this year is my sons owl birth sampler.

Here it was in its "infant stage" the last time I showed it to you...

And here is the big finish!

It is designed by Heather Yothers and I purchased it from her Etsy shop One of a Kind Baby Design.  The colors I chose match my sons crib bedding theme.  It will be awhile before I can get it framed and hang it up on his wall but I can't wait!  Once I completed the border and my sons first name I really lost interest because the stitching wasn't going quite as quickly as I thought it would.  That's when I had to take a small break and restart my HAED Mom and Baby Turtle.  But I did go back and once I finished the owl which I changed slightly from the chart to match the bedding, the rest stitched up fast (even the whole column of dreaded French knots!).  I'm still waiting on my one skein of thread from Amazon and then I will have another finish to show you soon.  Thank you everyone for following my progress and for all of your wonderful comments on my last post.  Happy Stitching!

Late February and VERY Late January YOTA post!

Hello fellow crafters and bloggers.  Today I am showing you my progress for the YOTA or Year of the Acronym SAL hosted by pull the other thread.  I have been stitching a lot but not blogging much this year.  I was really hoping to finish or purchase the one lonely floss I needed to complete Medieval Lady while we were home in the US but I didn't.  When we made it back to Nepal I was however able to finish all of the beading!  Here are some photos of her from January.  I only last week ordered the floss to finish her so I have no idea when I will get it in the mail.

Anyways here she is overall!

And a close up of some of the beads...

And here is a view of her beautiful face and the tiny amount of stitches left to complete when my floss arrives.

I really enjoyed stitching this design from Karen Brittan found in Cross Stitch Gold Magazine!

Ok that was what I should have posted for January...now on to February's YOTA project.  I have been dying to get back to my first HAED start Mom and Baby Turtle.  The last time I worked on it was almost a year ago and I had just finished the first page which you can see here : http://craftingacrosscontinents.blogspot.com/2014/02/first-haed-start-mom-and-baby-turtle.html

Here is the stitching I have done so far...

This page is almost twice the size of the last one.  I started working on it again because I needed a break from my son's birth sampler.  I really love the colors and haven't had too much confetti stitching to do yet.  Hopefully I'll have more to show you next month and my post will actually be on time!  Happy Stitching!