Mermaid mother and Son: 1+ years and going strong

Hello everyone,

Many of you may not know, but when I went to China last year I splurged a lot on cross stitching. There's a big community there, as the cross stitch predominately comes in printed form. Before going to China I hadn't seen that form before and simply worked on counted cross stitch. So guess my surprise when I came across printed stitch, with the pattern already on the fabric.

KAAA-BLOOIE! My mind was blown away. And so was half of my wallet after spending the afternoon in a shopping plaza that had multiple cross stitch stores. After seeing what they could do with embroidery, I knew that my skills lied in stitching that X.

What did I get exactly? Well, I am unrecoverable drawn to mermaids, fairies, dragons, and pretty fluffy dresses. If you look down below, you will see the work that I started in the Winter of 2014.

Her blue hair is just lovely. I wish they had her with blue instead of brown. But, as you can see, something is different. If you look up the original picture on the internet, you'll see that the mom's skin tone and hair are not like the original design. That's because I SHOOK IT UP!

Look at that progress! A year off and on work is marvelously distracting. The skin tone is a challenge though, because the shades don't flow as well as the peach flow (as I discovered a year and 5 months later :l). Which left me going back and redoing some parts, right to the point where I threw down my fabric and gently placed my scissors in my sewing kit. Throwing scissors is a big no no. 

Down below, you can look at what I had done first, and then how I went back into that section and SHOOK IT UPx2!

Before

After

Before

After

Ta-daaah!

See those red spots? Yeah, that's the midway skin tone that did not come with the hair color. Now I'm stuck before I can mentally cajole my inner child to stop throwing a whinny fit and actually search for a color.

BOOOO times infinity times infinity till it goes back to zero and beyond!

When I win that battle, I will post more photos along with the areas of progress I have made. Right now, I'm switching between completing a box or working on one particular color/symbol. It goes, like my diet, back and forth without guidance. A whim. But sometimes, sometimes, I actually have a plan and work on it. I mean, when you already know some of your colors are off and don't match the picture, it's another struggle with your seven year old self. 

Toodles :3 

-VanaQB