A Long Time Between Posts

It has been a long time between my blog posts. What a difficult year it has been. My dear Dad, William (Bill) Muir passed away on 26 September after losing his short battle with glioblastoma (brain tumor of the worst type). It has been such an emotional year and as a result I have not kept up with all I should including my posts. Life is slowly gaining a new sort of normal now so hopefully I will get back to working on the things that have put aside for this year.

I am looking forward to a whole new and hopefully uneventful and quiet year. An uneventful and quiet year hopefully will bring lots of fabulous new designs and new inspiration.

I would like to also take a moment to thank the embroidery world for all it's tremendous support this year during dad's illness. We received so many loving and kind emails and prayers that touched both Dad and myself. In today's ever increasing angry world, that kind and loving support meant the world to us and really helped develop an aspect on the fact that there is still a wonderful community of amazing people out there. So thank you - your support means more than I can ever express in words and gave me a revitalised appreciation of the nature of mankind.

So hopefully in the coming weeks I will start to update this blog on a more frequent basis with some interesting tips and chat on embroidery!

Whats On the Drawing Board

I have not had a lot to post about lately - time is taken up significantly with family illness, work and family so today I thought I would just post a new sneak peek of whats on the drawing board. This week I am working away on Greek Alphabets and a Cute Croc set. So for now - just a quick sneak peek of what's coming up this week!!! Enjoy.

Autumn Whimsy's

Life still continues to be crazy here and my blog updates are still too far apart. Dad is still holding in there but has a lot of ups and downs with his tumors and of course with school underway, there is always a lot of distractions. However, we continue to work madly away in the mean time on new releases. I just need to now divert more energy to administrative things like keeping our blog and gallery up to date!

Anyhow - my concentration lately has been on those wonderful upcoming holidays such as Thanksgiving, Halloween and my favourite season - Autumn (even though it is Winter here in Australia!!!). I just wanted to take a moment to give you a sneak peek of one of the sets I am working on - Swirly Autumn. I am having so much fun with this set - so I hope you enjoy the preview! And of course my thanks to Olivia for the absolutely inspiring artwork!

A Long Awaited Update

It seems like forever since I have blogged and I apologize. With my father having taken ill, some things have slipped. The good news is that his treatment has been effective and we know we have some more time with him though he has new spots of brain cancer starting up. So my blogging could still be patchy.

In the mean time, I just wanted to post a sneak peek of our upcoming sets! I have two sets in progress at the moment, My Pet and Cuddly Kittens.

Also, I just wanted to add a tip! Be sure to keep your machines serviced regularly - it is amazing how well they run after a service. I just had my Janome 11000 serviced for the first time since I got it about 4 years ago.... I had noticed it getting louder and not as smooth. I have tended not to get my machine serviced as I can not live without it for a week, but it is now working brilliantly..... Personally, I think it actually calls for me to get a second machine so that I can afford to get them serviced more regularly given thier use.... That's what I am telling myself anyway.

For those of you in the US, have a wonderful 4th of July weekend.

Sneak Peek

It is a very busy time for us personally at the moment with lots happening from my daughters birthday, to family illnesses, to some very, very minor surgery for me this week and topped off by an instore presentation coming up this Saturday so I have slowed down a bit the last few days with the digitizing and will also be a bit slow until this coming Sunday. So I just wanted to take a moment to post up a sneak peek of what I am in the process of working on until it is released (I do hope to get it up in the next day or so).

Needless to say, I am itching to get back to normal routine again as I have been so motivated the last months to digitize. But in the mean time, enjoy the sneak peek and I do hope to have it released in the next 1 - 2 days!

Creative or Not?

I am just sitting here pondering the comments many people give me that I must be so creative to do what I do. I just wanted to take a moment to credit my wonderful illustrators Penny Johnson, Marisa Straccia, Olivia Kneibler, Angela Brown and the many other miscellaneous illustrators that I license artwork from. They are the truly creative ones who dream up concepts and make what we at Bunnycup special. Without their creativity and vivid imaginations, Bunnycup embroidery would be just another embroidery website but it is their talents that make Bunnycup designs stand out.

As for me being creative, I have to say that I personally would describe myself more as technical. I was a Chartered Accountant in my prior life (auditor and compliance specialist) if that can help paint a picture. Digitizing is a technical process of creating a data file from artwork though I suppose some reflection of creativity is seen in the way a design is digitized and the different stitch types and effects.

Anyhow, this post is just to say thank you to my wonderful illustrators who so tirelessly create wonderful illustration after wonderful illustration and terrific concepts. Without you, Bunnycup would not be what it is. So thank you.

Corrupted Downloads

This week I would like to talk a bit about corrupted downloads. When downloading files, it is possible that the file gets corrupted in the download process and some information is 'scrambled'. What can result with embroidery designs is variety of problems but include:

- outlines being significant misplaced
- objects being misaligned in the design
- stitches being misplaced
- a file that will not open or unzip.

Often, because of a lack of education in respect to corrupted downloads, the customer blames the design and digitizer because a section of the design or outline is misplaced. Where, if the customer simply redownloaded the design, the issue is likely to rectify itself (and that the problem lies in the download not the actual digitized file).

If you have a design that is doing something you do not expect, it is recommended that you redownload the design again as redownloading will correct a corrupted download (unless you have the misfortune of getting two corrupted downloads in a row).

I also recommend opening the design in an embroidery software before stitching it out such as http://www.embird.com . A program such as embird will display the design on your computer before stitching it on a project and you will see if anything looks odd or it will tell you if the file is unreadable. In which case you can download the design again and see if something has gone awry before any heartache occurs on the machine.

Please also note that your internet connection plays role in the likelihood of a corrupted download. Dial up connections are often slower in downloading and as a result, increases the risk of corrupted or scrambled data. High speed connections, although not infallible, reduce the likelihood of corrupted downloads.

Sneak Peek

I have again been remiss in neglecting my blog. The last weeks have passed very quickly with getting our little girl Bailey settled into Grade One at her new school. She has been doing a great job settling in though seems to be getting very tired at night. I have otherwise been very much motivated by digitizing the last couple of months and been very much tail down and digitizing like crazy to the detriment of updating my blog and gallery. I got my gallery updated last week (with many thanks to those customers who have contributed to the gallery) and this week I am back to updating my blog. Hopefully now everything is up to date, I can now motivate myself better to keep abreast of the more administrative side of things. Today, I just wanted to share with you an update on life in general and a sneak peek of our next set coming up called Baby Bluebird which is based on artwork exclusively licensed from the very talented Olivia from http://www.oliviaandco.com/

If you have not visited Olivia's website, be sure to do so. She has the most wonderful artwork for scrapbooking and I am very privledged to have exclusive licensing rights to her more recent work. Olivia's website has also undergone a face lift in the last weeks and is now looking absolutely wonderful so be sure to have a look!

Its A New Year

A new year has sprung and I have been personally overwhelmed for the start of it with everyone home on the summer holidays. So I do apologise for a slow start to the blog this year and lack of posts. School starts up again in about 10 days so I should be able to finally find my new routine for a new year.

I have been very motivated with the start of the new year and all the possibilities ahead for new and wonderful sets and building up Bunnycup. Hopefully this year will see the implementation of our members section of our website which has been in the making for about 3 years now.

In the mean time, I wanted to post a quick sneak peek of this weeks upcoming release - a wonderful Easter Applique set great for boys and girls. I do promise to post more fun blog entries more regularly once the kids are back to school and routine starts again!