DEV>Floral Rainbow Snowflake

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Goodies are for sale via my Etsy: pinkythepink.etsy.com/
Progress was posted on Facebook: www.facebook.com/MakeItPinkEts…
Also posted progress on Instagram?! @ pinkythepink

Waaaaaay back in January 2018 (this year, but already almost eight months ago!) my teacher (and now business partner) JoAnn told me that she was burning out on the Brazilian embroidery. She had done all the kits she really wanted to do and she doesn't like to do a project twice (like me) and even as such she was already on her THIRD giant monogram (because her other daughter-in-law wanted one too). She expressed to me that she was unsure about the class continuing for all these reasons.

Then, JoAnn brought up this snowflake thing. Our friend and another member of the class, Alet, had already done the snowflake, so JoAnn had seen it in person and wouldn't mind trying it out. But my brain was already on board. While JoAnn stayed on the fence I KNEW this was going to be a beast of color, a sparkly mess, a challenge for the thread hoard. It had to be done. WITH OR WITHOUT HER. Then she told me the instructions had confused Alet and I was like, kay, maybe I need to do it with JoAnn and not without.

Sometime in the middle of June we actually started stitching, once our shop was a reality. I raided JoAnn's and Alet's threads to get every color together. But I knew that if my rainbow rose in the center didn't work perfect-like that I would choose something else. It was do or die. I needed a total rainbow in the center. Luckily:

I had already purchased rainbow thread for a different JoAnn project. Threadworx rainbow thread came to save my life, and even though it was cotton and every other thread on was to be rayon it was simply meant to be. HONESTLY, look how fabulous that center rose turned out to be. You can't go wrong with that. It's amazing.

My next hurdle was the rainbow selection. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. You might find this gross of me as a person or an artist, but I look down my nose on the indigo/violet thing when listing out a rainbow. As individual colors? Oh yes, absolutely. But in the rainbow purple is purple, live with it. Anyway, that only gave me six. With pink (because you know I wasn't going to leave pink out) I only had seven colors, and that meant purple needed to be split. Bam. Eight.

All colors were accounted for within an hour except for yellow. Problem is, I needed the flowers on top to be a different shade from whatever was underneath. Since yellow is notoriously a difficult shade for thread (HIGHLIGHTER or MACARONI, no in betweens) (do not eat) the only one we could find was a variegated goldenrod for the correct size on the leafs, which meant I had to go very pale for the flowers. I think it works out, but it took a bit of doing. The pink is more contrasting in life than the photos make it out to be.

Once all my stems were stitched the flowers came and went, and then everything went on hold for the daisies. I couldn't do the daisies as an either-or color. They're sitting in between stems! It had to be a gradient color between the two which meant going back into Alet and JoAnn's thread hoards to find some. It was a difficult dive but I came out successful, and though the daisies aren't quiteeeee as perfectly two-tone as I wanted I still think they're gorgeous.

So beads are next, right? Because we all know there's not a snowflake's chance in Phoenix that I'm going to be doing french knots.

Thankfully I have quite the bead stash already so diving in to find the most beautiful ones was a simple and enjoyable task. I spent quite a bit of time deciding on what to do with the center. Like the daisies the center was between stems which meant if any one color dominated a section the entire piece would be tossed overboard. The only solution to that is to pick up random colors, and so I did! This gives the center rose its own bead spray as well.

The very last bit were, again, the daisies. Since I had gone with the two-tone it meant that, again, no one color could dominate their centers. I thought it would be kind of weird to do two beads in the center, so I thought maybe four, but that didn't feel quite right either. WITNESS MY SOLUTION, the beautiful white crystals catch every minute shimmy of light even in a darkened room. Honestly, I don't think anything could have been better for the daisies. Those crystals are the icing on the cake.

TL;DR I fell in love with my own project and have this weird disassociation where I wish it was mine and then I realize it is mine but like no way did I pull that off it had to be someone else I wish I could buy it BUT IT'S ALREADY MINEEEE.


Stem stitch, leaf stitch, frilly rose, bossa nova rose, combo daisy, and cast on flowers. Threadworx cotton rainbow thread, various sizes and colors of Edmar rayon thread, plain white Guterman thread, and invisible nylon. Glass seed beads in sizes 11 and 8, all silver lined (except for one). Eight crystals with the X backing that I never know the name of.

Color Total: 25
Bead Sizes: 2
Bead Color Total: 21
Bead Total: 464 + 8 crystals
Size: ~12 inch circle
Time Total: 31 Hours
This is a JDR kit, 100% customized.

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