This was a fun one from start to finish

I love Blackberry Lane Designs because of the detail they give each piece.  Lots of color changes, but in the end it is always worth it.  "Relaxing at the Beach" was so cute and the stitch was really fun.  Of course, after it was done I wish I had done a couple of things differently, but I had already redone one side when I decided to replace the flags (after I had stitched them) on the banner at the top with ones I cute out instead.  At first I cute them out of ribbon but didn't  have the colors I wanted and God forbid I should go buy some....so I used scrapbook paper instead.  I also used satin stitch on the boogie board and the front flamingo and the red bucket.  I used a #8 perle coton for the bucket handle.  Marie has included 2 charts in the chart pack.  One has the sign and one doesn't.  I really wanted to use the directional sign so I could put Ocean City on it and used Beach on one, Home on one , the date and my initials on others.  For a final bit of tweaking things, I added a seagull button to the sign post, because in Ocean City there are seagulls sitting on all posts normally.  Then I handed it over to Sara and Vernon.  When Sara sent me a picture of the sign we used for inspiratiion for the final product, I knew we could never freehand the lettering, so I went to Michaels and purchased the 

air machine 2 (God forbide I order it from our supplier at a much lower cost, because it would have delayed the finish by a couple of weeks and I could be dead by then) so to do this lettering I spent a little under $300 at Michaels.  What we do and spend for our art.  I embarrassed to say I've lost the vinyl for the lettering already, during a clean up at home (this is why I should just never clean)...so now I have to get more.   But I love the machine so I'll be doing them for any of these signs people want.  Of course Vernon doesn't want to ever put the letters on another one so we are trying to figure that part out now.  

Anyway, I hope Marie doesn't mind the changes I made.   It wasn't a change in design, simply a change in the stitches used.  I did stitch it on Picture This Plus Helix in the count Marie used and used the colors she called for.  Perfect design and too much fun to stitch.  And now I'm moving on to Fall.  And of course I saw the new Brenda Gervais pieces and I've pulled all 4 as possibles.  But there are always the Halloween pieces from Blackberry Lane that I have to stitch.  Good golly, it's a good thing I've got 5 days off this week.  Yes, it's almost like I'm retired.  Whoopee!  So I'm going to work on finishing on the challenge piece which is fully stitched...and a fall piece I finished last night and start a few new pieces.  Fun, Fun, Fun....having a grand old time.  Have a great week...hope you get some stitching in.