Wow. I embellished 4 handbags this week (teal, brown, striped, and purple). I crocheted a new mini handbag in ecru. I had a yellow one, but I didn't like any of my current fabrics paired with it. I figured it was faster to crochet a new mini handbag to match fabric I have, than to go to Joann's and look around. :)
I love the brown bag. The flower stems are sage yarn that I stitched on with embroidery floss. The white stitches in the flower centers are French knots with tails - something I learned from the embroidery book I got recently.
The striped fabric was a one of my birthday presents from Andrew. It's the most crazy, fun, striped fabric ever. To echo the bold design of the fabric, I cross-stitched on the single crochet using yarn. I thought embroidery floss would be too delicate compared to the lively stripes.
I had a lot of trouble embellishing the purple bag. My two attempts and creating embroidered paisleys failed. The biggest problem was that I didn't have the right color of felt to back the paisleys, so they just looked weird on the purse. I saved my paisleys for the next patch swap, because they are cool on their own.
Exasperated, I started looking through my stash to find inspiration, and I came across these sequins. They are the same iridescent, clear sequins on the teal purse, but they have a much different effect on the purple purse. They create a tuquoise/purple shimmer, which I think is a perfect compliment to the paisley lining fabric.
I apologize for the wanky color in these WIP photos (and the teal ones). Once the handbags are all done, with linings and everything, I want to take some nice photos of them. These photos almost look like mug shots, poor handbags. :)
I was focusing on the bags this week, so there was less progress on the ornaments. Just one and a half X's.