I took part in the Embroider Me to Sleep! Pillowcase Swap earlier this month, and my partner received (two days from St. Louis to Co. Galway, Ireland - not too shabby), so here I go posting the pillowcases I made.
My partner told me she likes mermaids and pin-ups, so I made an effort to combine the two.  Thanks to my friend amaryllisroze, I found this great website, where I found these two pinups:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3306/3554941023_56ab63e5bc_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3394/3554941437_4a9e0acb31_o.jpg

I took the two pictures, altered them in Photoshop, and came up with these:


(I couldn't get the merman's tailfin right, so I waited until I was transferring to do it by hand.)

Then I took the name of my swap partner and her husband, put them into this font (which I thought looked watery without being too pirate-y) (I can't remember the font name!):


I took both pillowcases and painted them with Jacquard Lumiere paints.  As soon as they dried, I washed them out and dried them to color seal them, then got to stitching!




I used satin stitch for the names, backstitch for their skin, couching for the mermaid's hair, and chain stitch for the rocks and the merman's tail.  I took on this swap because I thought it would be an easy, simple, no-big-deal type of thing, but then I just had this idea in my head that the mermaid needed sequins on her tail, so I spent more time doing those than I did anything else!  In order to do them, I had to glue them down with Elmer's since it's water-soluble, then stitch.  They kept popping off, but I got at least half of them done that way.  Then, when I washed the cases, the glue just came right out.

I had a lot of fun doing these, but I made the stitches too tight in the merman's hair, and you can see where the fabric pulls right there.  I wish I'd had time to fill in the mermaid's hair as well, but I thought it was a pretty good combination, with him having more detail on his hair since she had so much detail on her tail.

Comments, questions welcome!

Teapotdnky, my partner in the child-free swap, requested some type of holder for her adult vices.  I created this out of polymer clay swirlies, then gave the whole thing a wash with a mixture Jacquard Lumiere paints in blue and green.  I then sealed the whole thing.

My partner in the child-free swap was allergic to metal, so I made her a completely metal-free resin pendant and a metal-free necklace to go on it!  I used a match to melt the plastic spoon around a pencil, then cast the resin in the bowl of the spoon.  The sparkles are chunky mylar glitter I got from Michaels.

I made this shirt for the Childfree Swap.  My partner, teapotdnky, has received, so now I post here!  I got the shirt at Target for $2.50 on clearance, and ironed it to limit the ruching to the top so I could work with it.  I printed out the phrase (her idea) in the font Coolvetica, which is a modified version of Helvetica, then cut it out on the freezer paper.  Ironed it to the shirt, painted with Jacquard pink halo paint, and voila!  What you see here.

I'd love to get a Christmas tin swap going, but I can't organize it!  Anyone in? Anyone interested?

My sister is due on the 19th, so I made the baby and her big sister a matching onesie/t-shirt set:

The font is FontDinerDotCom Luvable from, shockingly, http://www.fontdiner.com.

Then I ironed some cute designs from http://www.urbanthreads.com onto some more onesies:

(Sorry for the crap pictures.)

Sorry for the dorktastic subject line, couldn't help myself!

This is a variation on my previously posted amoeba pillowcases, this time with electric blue and green instead of pink and orange.  Same as before: split stitch, with French knots.  I know it's silly to have a favorite, er, spore or cell or whatever you want to call it, but I love the enormous one in the bottom left-ish.

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This is a set of pillowcases I embroidered.  I did it all freehand (mostly split stitch, with some French knots thrown in for good measure), and I love them, but i have absolutely no use for them, since they don't match anything I own.  (They'd be fine if they were just pink and brown, but the majority of the French knots are orange.)

This isn't my first embroidery project, but it is my first foray into Craftster, so I thought I'd start with a relatively simple one.

It's a pillowcase I embroidered with pink and brown circles to match my comforter; I had originally done a coordinating one with stripes, but I didn't like how it turned out.   
The top pic is a long shot, the bottom two are closeups.
To make the circles, I stretched the pillowcase in a hoop and used a compass and pencil; for the smaller ones, I used coins as templates.  I used running stitches, backstitches, split stitches, and chain stitches (that about covers all the stitches I know, save for satin stitch). 
I like the pillowcases I've seen where the stitching is done more on the "pillow" part of the case, but I prefer to do it on the edge; it kind of gives me a natural border.