Elephants on Parade

While my ship was out of Copenhagen this summer I was lucky enough to see a couple of outdoor art exhibitions dotted around the city. Elephant Parade was an open air art exhibit in which proceeds from the sales of the pieces were donated to charity in aid of the Asian elephant. The painted elephants flaunted many different styles and colours and were certainly eye catching. They were not around for long but I managed to get a fair few on camera to share with you here...

Aren't they beautiful? I hope they all went to great homes and lots of money was raised for the cause.

This one is for the ladies....

Over the summer I purchased a needle felting attachment for my beloved Bernina. I also found out about the Capture Cure charity auction which was accepting donated works of art to auction off in aid of breast cancer. My mother and best friend from high school are both recovering from breast cancer so this was a cause near to my heart.

I created a needle felted and embellished wall hanging that is a tribute to the strength of women. It uses skills taught to me by the women in my family and the new techniques I have learned after being inspired by them. Only 40 pieces were accepted into the auction, mine being one of them. I am fiercely proud of this and hope it went to a good home.

I am also about to start a little cross stitch I downloaded, designed by Emily Peacock. It is a pink breast cancer ribbon which I am going to make for myself and my mother. I haven't followed a cross stitch pattern in a while so it will be interesting to try that out again! I encourage you to go and get the pattern yourself and donate to breast cancer research in the process. Check out the Mr X Stitch post about it here

Hope For Japan - Finished!

My charity piece for Japan is finally finished! I decided to add a hand printed background and Japanese characters around the outside of the flag to finish it off...

When I get home in about a months time I am going to put this up for sale in my Etsy shop and the proceeds will go the the Red Cross to help Japan. If you're interested you can email me here

You can still donate to the Red Cross here as well

Hope for Japan

On the Hand Embroidery Network, we have been trying to get people to stitch the Japanese flag to show our support to Japan in their time of need.

I have finished stitching my flag but I think I want to create a whole art piece out of it. Its a work in progress :-) I filled the circle with little crosses and then outlined the piece with split stitch.

If you want to read the thread in the HEN forum about this check it out here

If you would like to donate money to the Red Cross to help Japan go here