castles and butterflies - Gold 156 and Crazy 256

Oh, how cool, just noticed that there are exactly 100 issues between these 2 mags! 😁

And they`re both in the shops now so I can share a few pics of the Carol Thornton castle I stitched for Cross Stitch Gold and the lovely butterflies by Cheryl McKinnon that`s this month`s free gift with Cross Stitch Crazy.

This project was custom-made for me: not only do I love Carol Thornton`s paintings-turned-into-cross-stitch-designs, but landscapes are my favourite cross stitch subject AND I love castles (we usually try to organise our family holidays around visiting as many as we can... which is not a difficult task in Scotland btw 😉). The project took just shy of 100 hours, mostly thanks to the confetti-heavy foreground of the flowers, but I loved every minute of it. Here are my progress pics strung together in a mini film:

And here are the lovely butterflies that are the free gift with issue 256 of Crazy, complete with purple hoop - I like it when there`s a different finishing idea for a project (but of course, this could be made into a card as well). Happy stitching!