Olivia's Sparkling Snowman

I finished stitching another "small" last night. It's the Christmas Onrnament that I mentioned in my last post -- or rather, it WILL be a Christmas ornament once I finish it. I plan on stitching Olivia's name and age along with the year on a back piece before finishing it into an ornament for her. Maybe something like:

Stitched by Mommy
for Olivia
3 Years Old
2006

We'll see how it turns out. I need to go through my books and magazines to find a lettering that I like. I know I have a couple of them that are cute, I'm just not sure how many I have that are small enough for this. The stitched area is only 48w x 58h (including all the beading) so it's a fairly small area for lettering.

Speaking of beading, this is the first projet I've ever used beads on. I've had a few packs of Mill Hill beads a few years ago but never used them. (I bought them for Scrapbooking) So when this pattern called for 4mm ribbon french knots, which I desperately hate doing, I decided to put some beads on in their place. It's cute. It almost l0oks like sparkling snowflakes falling, whereas before the knots were green ribbon... not very "snow like".

I changed up the colours for the pattern quite a lot. The scarf and hat were supposed to in shades of blue and the mits and ear muffs were in green. Also, the ecru stitching around the edges of the snowman were supposed to be in DMC silver metallic, but I started stitching and ripped it out completely a few minutes later. I HATE HATE HATE working with that stuff... I've never worked with the Krienik metallics though, are they any easier to work with than the DMC? I hope so because I love the metallic look, but refuse to use it unless I absolutely have to. Besides, I thought the ecru was more authentic looking. I still get the "sparkle" from the beads, so I'm quite happy with it.