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What Inspires Your Work?

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As I wander the World Wide Web looking at the interesting work of all of the different glass artists out there I wonder what inspires them and motivates their work. For myself it can be a mood or color or sometimes the prodding of a special order or upcoming show. A deadline is very motivating and gets the creative juices flowing. Where do you get your inspiration?

For the last glass show I participated in my motivation and inspiration was the glass I had fallen madly in love with. Some of you may know it…Double Helix Aurae and Kronos and Gaia. So beautiful! When properly worked in the flame it gets the loveliest metallic sheen to it. The jewelry I made with those beads were a hit and I couldn’t be happier. The beads shown below are made with Triton. I think I love this glass the best…or is it Aurae I love more? It’s all wonderful!

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I’m curious about what inspires your work. Is it the sunset you saw the other evening? How about the smell of some flowers you encountered on a walk in the park? Let me know. For the first five inspirational comments I’ll send you a set of the very glass beads that have been firing up my creative juices for the past couple of months. Send me your address to my email at [email protected] and I’ll get them right out to you. Have a great day! Be inspired!

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Christmas Ornament Cross Stitch Patterns

The other day I shared some cross stitch patterns with ornaments on them, so this time around I wanted to share cross stitch patterns that you can use as ornaments. It would be fun to do a whole tree in your craft room with cross stitch ornaments, or just add a few to your tree or give them as gifts.

These little quilt inspired cross stitch patterns from Flamingo Toes look like ornaments and fit in 3-inch hoops, which are perfect for hanging on the tree or using to decorate a gift. I love the pastel colors on these but you can use more traditional Christmas colors if you like.

This cute Christmas tree from Lagodargetoshop uses a single color and fits in a 4-inch hoop, but you could make it smaller if you wanted by trimming the last ornaments and gifts from the sides, or just stitch the tree without any other embellishments. Either way it’s a cute addition to your holiday tree.

Stitched Modern has a super cute collection of retro Christmas ornament cross stitch patterns from designer Gera. This is a printed pattern that will be shipped to you. Each pattern is about 40 by 56 stitches, or 2.9 by 4 inches/7.4 by 10 cm on 14 count fabric. To work the whole set you’ll need 20 colors of floss.

These snowflake ornaments from Our Little Handmade Home are each about 2.5 inches/6.4 cm when stitched on 14 count fabric, and they use a single color of floss. They are pretty in red but you could also do white on a blue or black background, or whatever suits your other Christmas tree decorations!

From the description it sounds like this set of vintage style cross stitch characters is presented as one large chart, but the photo from Sampler Antique Stitch shows each of them stitched up as their own little ornament, so it gets included here. You’ll find Santa and snowmen in different poses in this cute collection.