Indie Roller Keep Going

In case you don’t know about Indie Roller, I’ll brief you on the basics! The Facebook group The Indie Rollercoaster was set up by Leona from Lucky Dip Club as ‘a supportive community for creative independent business owners to share information, experience and cheerlead one another!’. It’s an amazing community, and what I love about it the most is how supportive people are. You definitely get that sense of community over competition, and in the creative world that’s becoming so much more important. The ‘Keep Going’ idea grew from that, and people have been submitting their own pieces to provide daily motivation and to share what inspires them to keep sharing their work with the world. I’m always really interested to hear about that, and the contributions have been amazing! You can check out the Keep Going Indie Roller Instagram if you want to see more of the submissions so far.

My Indie Rollercoaster Keep Going hoop

So my hoop uses quite a few colours (36 in total!) in order to create the 3D effect of the geometric pattern. I did play around with them a little bit to take some photos – putting things in rainbow order is always fun (like my rainbow shelf in my craft room!). The hoop is stitched entirely with satin stitch, so it took a little while to put together. I think I spent about 2 and a half weeks stitching on an evening and when Little One was asleep, so it was a big project to finish even though it’s in a 6″ hoop.

I started by stitching around the letters first, to make sure that I was happy with the negative space and the tension around it. There were a few tiny patches of colour and fiddly bits to stitch. I find the middle of the letter ‘o’ quite pleasing! To keep the stitching consistent, I stitched each shade in the same direction to make it look nice and neat. When I had almost finished, I realised that there was one purple side going in the wrong direction…so I had to unpick it and do it again! Otherwise it would have bugged me forever… I decided to use a royal blue paint to paint my hoop, and I think it sets off all the colours nicely.

Keep Going cards from hellohoorayshop

This piece is a bit too time consuming to make them to order, so I decided to have some cards made with this design! It comes in three different colours and they are currently available to pre-order here (I’m hoping to have them ready to ship over the next couple of weeks). Which one is your favourite?! I keep changing my mind haha!

This card would be a perfect reminder to keep going – a daily dose of inspiration and colour. Thanks to everyone who has ordered so far! And a big thank you to Indie Roller for such a fantastic campaign. I can’t wait to see more of these super illustrations and designs!

The post Indie Rollercoaster Keep Going hoop appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

Hand embroidered social media icons: basic materials

I started stitching 4″ versions of these hoops last year, but they were a complete mess. Especially the Pinterest hoop…so I decided to make it a little easier this time by going smaller. Each hoop is 3″ (7.5cm) and I’ve used satin stitch for each one using 3 strands of embroidery thread. It’s actually quite tricky to get hold of 3″ wooden hoops in the UK, and when I looked in my usual sources they had all run out. Thankfully, they came back in stock at Cloud Craft so I ordered a few to keep me going!

I also wanted to paint each hoop, and originally wanted to colour match to the icon colours but this proved to be quite difficult. So instead, I chose a lovely bright turquoise – something different to all the icon colours that would tie them all together.

Facebook hoop

The Facebook hoop looks like it could be the easiest of the four, but it was actually quite tricky. The curve of the F was a bit challenging, and I spent ages trying to get the top of the circle right. It seems that I’m better at sewing the bottom of a circle rather than the top, strangely! Eventually, I decided that slight lumps and bumps don’t matter. They are hand embroidered social media icons after all

Only one colour was needed for this hoop, and I used DMC 312 (Anchor match is 979).

Pinterest hoop

As I said at the start of the post, when I made my first version of this Pinterest logo it was SO bad! When I stitched it the first time, I didn’t go straight across around the circle but stitched outside in, if that makes sense?! Like the Instagram hoop later in this post. But that made it look so messy, as it was hard to get a neat edge. So this time I just stitched straight across from left to right, and I think it’s much neater. That’s the key to consistent satin stitch I think!

Only one colour was needed for this hoop, and I used DMC 304 (Anchor match is 1006).

Twitter hoop

This was probably the simplest of all 4 of my hand embroidered social media icons, which I wasn’t expecting! This is one of my favourite shades of DMC thread – the blue is just so vibrant. I was wondering if the detail of the beak would come out clearly in such a small hoop, but it is fine. Again, I kept my stitches consistent going left to right across the hoop.

Only one colour was needed for this hoop, and I used DMC 996 (Anchor match is 433).

Instagram hoop

Finally, it’s my favourite – Instagram! This was the most challenging by far, just because of the number of colours and getting the shading right between each one. But I LOVE how it has turned out! I have been a bit cheeky with this one, because I’ve used the colours from the new (ish) logo, but the shape of the old one. I just prefer the design of the original logo – what can I say?! So sorry, Instagram! I love the combination of colours in this one – yellow, oranges through to pink and purple. Can you spot the tiny hint of blue at the top? Just a small amount but it sets it off nicely

I’m actually going to use this colour palette for the next in the series of #craftycolourpalettes so you’ll have to wait to find out what they are…

Which one is your favourite?

You can follow me on Facebook, Pinterest (I really LOVE the new-look Pinterest!), Twitter and Instagram. Do pop over and say hello! What are you up to this weekend?

The post Hand embroidered social media icons appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.