crying Kim

 

 

A customer photo of one of my framed embroideries, sitting in good company to a print from Oh Gosh Cindy. Crying Kim Kardashian is my favourite and Oh Gosh Cindy has captured that ugly cry perfectly (everyone needs an ugly cry every now and then though, right?) and totally contradicts that embroidery.

I love seeing photos of intwosandthrees in-situ, keep them coming guys! 

"pretty offensive"

Strange phrase, "pretty offensive", isn't it? A nice oxymoron though that aptly describes these little swear word embroideries.

www.intwosandthrees.etsy.com

How to beat the art - block blues : part 7

girls & plants

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caitlin Shearer, Karolin Schnoor, withapencilinhand, Rachel Levit and Jen Collins

not at all

 

 

I tend to draw when I take a break from embroidery, whether that's for an afternoon or for an hour. It's great to go back to the embroidery with fresh eyes and squeezing in a few moments to draw makes me feel like I'm not missing out. Drawing faces, mainly girls recently, seems to be the topic of the moment as I've nearly filled a sketchbook with colourful studies and layered line work. The term 'babeface' keeps coming to mind when I look back on these drawings, so perhaps a zine should be the next step, so as not to let the drawings go to waste.

We'll see, anyway.

Zippy & George

Details from a double kitty portrait recently.
I love when I can make portraits using a scale of tones, especially when they're caramel and browns. It's always a little bit stressful finding the right colour threads, I try hard to make sure they match the pet in question. I'm finding recently, however, that if I work in a few layers of colours in a similar tone, with lots of stitches, I can create a fairly close match.
I think I'd like to make a portrait of something using bright colours - like shades of pink or blues or something totally different. Just to see if I can...

work more, do more

 

 

I took this photo a few weeks back, during a miserable artists block. While trawling through Pinterest and perving on artists on Instagram can be successful, sometimes a good old fashioned book is exactly what I need to feel inspired again. They're not necessarily books on art that I'm about to make - Ed Templeton takes incredible can-did photos of skaters and teenagers, Jenny Saville, Egon Schiele and Lucian Freud are painters I absolutely love, but could never replicate, and Cindy Sherman dresses up as other characters and creates stories within photos and documentation - I haven't attempted art along any of those lines since uni, but going back to their books and admiring their imagination and skills really gets me pumped up to pull my finger out and work a little harder. 

because, I can

 

 

Even if you just purchase a little hand stamped card, I'll still wrap it all fancy for you, because who doesn't like happy post?

www.intwosandthrees.etsy.com

Travis, Milly and Niesha

 

 

 

I always find that making something for someone you're close to, friends or family, is about a million times harder than making something for a customer I've never met. Travis, Milly and Niesha belong to Cathy, Jess and Boo, friends I've met through the pop-up shop. I've also met Milly and Niesha in the flesh, so stitching a likeness to cats I've already met results in more pressure. Cats always turn out looking pissed off and dogs always end up looking sad, so I always panic about the likeness between the embroidery and the photos I'm given to work from. Everyone seems happy with their little embroideries though, and despite the pressure (that I probably put on myself), I really enjoyed making these. Pissed off or sad, they're pretty cute really.

this little house, on top of the hill

I don't know why I didn't make this sooner. I'd embroidered a little cottage, complete with thatched roof and picket fence to play with scale and fine thread. Turning the trial into an actual 'fuckers' embroidery should have been the obvious next step, instead this little embroidery was just hanging around on my pile of half complete stitchings.
I'll make more of these soon, they're a little better than the tray cloth edition and make a bit more sense, right?
I'm still a little fed up with making the 'home is where..' embroideries, so these aren't exactly top of my list at the minute. I'll aim to make more in June time, that gives me a couple of months to get over it haha.

3 little cunts & a twat

You ask, I make! More little swear filled embroideries have just been added to the etsy shop.
www.intwosandthrees.etsy.com

inside / outside

I loved stitching this vintage tattoo flash style hand and flowers image. I'd started a series of these simple black work embroideries, but only got around to framing and listing one of them - sometimes, I get kind of swamped with custom orders, and forget to make something new/different/for myself/for etsy/for fun etc. So, with this in mind, I've started to schedule in days off or days for doing / making something different, as well as the scheduled custom orders. Scheduling just means that customers contact me first regarding a personalised embroidery, we then, together, discuss dates when they would like the embroidery by, and a date when I can dedicate my time to their embroidery. Pet portraits take 2 days for a small piece, and 4 days for a double portrait. I like to make sure customers can have their embroidery in advance of their desired date (usually if they're gifts etc). I then make sure there is at least one day after and one day before each custom embroidery, to be a day off or day for something different. It all sounds super organised, but I learnt the hard way over Christmas with a crazy amount of embroideries and not enough hours in the day causing me to totally burn out. So, this now means that I'll have more time to make new work, take on exciting custom orders and play with drawing and illustration more too. Hooray!

keep your head on,

 

 


Feeling rather agitated by that annoying fly bumping around your room? Super annoyed that you can't find your lucky pants? Over excited about Game of Thrones coming back on the T.V?

Calm your tits love, it will be ok.

 

{yeah, those are little crochet nipples - I'll be making boob bunting with them soon} 

Baloo

 

 

I try not to be biased when I'm making custom pet portraits, I always enjoy all of them and always love oohing and ahhing over the photos I'm sent. But come on, Baloo the puppy though!

Such a cute lil' pup.

asap

 

 

Who wouldn't team a little cunt embroidery with a vintage drawing of some cute kitties? More of these embroideries will be available soon, I promise, things have just been super hectic recently. Watch this space for exciting new work!

super

 

 

When I'm swamped with embroidery commissions, I think about how much I want to be drawing and painting. Then when I'm drawing I think about how I've got loads of embroidery to do. The good thing about this unnecessary worry, is that I quickly draw things and move on to something else. This often results in new drawing styles that I don't mind playing around with.
This is an example of a 10 minute break. Just felt tip pens and moody girls.