Flag City, Air Guitar and Mermaid Keychain

With Memorial Day upon us in the U.S., it was a fitting time to do a little patriotic piece.  Although this is not really a style I would normally be attracted to, I was drawn to it since it is a SAL piece in the "All About Smalls" Facebook group.  The design is an older freebie from La-D-Dah called "Flag City".  Group members are modifying it to suit their needs and some of the creative ideas for it among the stitchers are just amazing.  The original design has the words "Flag City" at the top, but stitchers are often substituting their own city or state.  I wanted something more generic so I changed the title to "Old Glory".  I omitted the date as well and charted a funky bird under the flag.  It's stitched on Dove Gray Monaco over-one, with my own selection of DMC floss colors.  I got a little bored with the border so I simplified that as well.  Finished it up as a cute little pinkeep with the last of my red and blue beads.  And I love the result.

Next I moved  out of the prim area and into something a bit more modern day.  One of my good friends just turned 60 and his wife is giving him a birthday party next weekend.  She only does this at each decade change.  I used one of the motifs from Lynn Nicoletti's "Air Guitar" design to create a birthday card for the occasion.   No matter how old you get, you can still play a mean air guitar!   The card is also over-one on Monaco.  The original design was meant to use glow-in-the-dark floss for all the green outlines that you see on my work.  So it would look really cool with the guitar only showing in the dark.  But I think I it's a pretty nice card without doing that,  although I don't know if my friend will appreciate embroidery!  I did the electric blue foot rest in x-stitch over-2 to avoid solid color fill-in boredom.  Then I jazzed it up with few sequins.  The wording is my addition also.

 

 

 In my last post, I showed an Altoid tin decorated with a mermaid theme, but I had not selected any contents.  I thought about it and decided to make a keyring fob from the  "Guardians of the Sea" freebie by the Little Sittcher (click here for the chart).  And yes, another over-one design on Monaco.  Sensing a pattern here.  I love the look of these tiny mermaids.

 

And now I leave you with this quarter's dental office reminder art,  the very famous Van Gogh, "Toothy Night".

For those in the U.S., have  good holiday!