Linda's Review of Tiny Treasured Diamond Holiday Cardinal Embellished Ornament Kit by Mill Hill

I've always wanted to try beading and have admired beautiful crazy quilt creations with beading and ornaments created with beading for a long time.

I've also admired goddess dolls and have wanted to try my hand at creating some of the beautiful beaded goddess dolls that I've seen.  Back in 2009 when I wrote about the goddess dolls in a Linda's Blog post entitled "Why Not Be Adventuresome?" and "My Goddess Doll Adventure So Far!" I was hoping to have some time to create some of them.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do so as of yet.  I'm still hoping that maybe this year I will find just a smidgen of time.

I was first introduced into beaded ornaments many, many years ago when a colleague at work brought in some of the beaded tree ornaments she had made and was selling. She had some large blue beaded ornaments like those shown in the picture below and some smaller white beaded ornaments like those shown in the 2nd picture below. So, I bought three of the large blue ones and 3 of the smaller white ones.  They quickly became some of my favorite Christmas tree ornaments.

Linda's Review of M'Lady's Chateau - Dimensions Gold Collection Cross-Stitch Kit

If I told you that I had spent over 250 hours on a cross-stitch picture you'd probably think I was nuts. However,  if you're a follower of my The Book Review Corner blog you already know that I love needlecraft's.  So, spending 250+ hours on a cross-stitch might not be hard to imagine.

I did spend that much time on one cross-stitch during the last few months and I'd do it again as the cross-stitch picture (shown in the picture above and shown framed in the picture below) is absolutely stunning.  If you click on both images you can view an enlarged version of the picture.

To give you a little background on why I would do this, back in July I wrote a Linda's Blog post about my pressed flower pictures entitled "My Pressed Flower Pictures - Now That's A Great Idea!"  In that post I told you about a large pressed flower picture I had made that was hanging in our master bedroom and, sadly, was fading which meant it needed to be replaced.

Well, my husband thought a needlepoint picture like the one I had done in the dining room but much bigger would be nice. I wrote about this needlepoint picture awhile ago in a Linda's Blog post entitled "Needlecraft Picture From A Decade Ago - Or So!"

So, since our house is filled with dolls and pictures of buildings & houses I thought a cross-stitch Victorian scene might be just the thing. So, I set out to find some large cross-stitch kits that would be suitable.