Tag bright colors

top of 40 card

Life Begins at 40!

CraftyK Leave a comment

Oh where to start with this one! It was stitched quickly, but the card making was one problem after another. This one was quite improvised due to extreme time constraints. When a birthday lands on a Sunday I lose a day. My goal is to have it arrive via mail on Saturday. Luckily it is only going a few blocks away (I think).

40 in progress

This card is going to a former co-worker of mine. We took walks pretty much daily for several months. During those walks I learned she was turning 40 this year. After acquiring several new cross stitch books this year I came across this pattern and decided that it would be the 50th card for the year. While it’s more like 45th in order of birthdays, this one brought me to a total of 50 cards to be made in 2019.

backstitching 40

Since this person shares a birthday with my brother the pressure was on to get them both done in time. And a mad rush to the post office to get them out on time! This pattern had backstitching which slowed down progress a bit.

The stitching and interfacing fabric went just fine for this one, it was the actual card part when things fell apart. Remember, a bit rushed on time for this one.

This person is super positive and bright. Even if things are going terribly, she’ll have a smile on her face and do whatever it is that needs doing. So a bright yellow paper for the card base what what I chose. This card is a 4.25×5.5, minus a little due to measuring errors.

angled view from bottom of 40 card

The butterfly paper was supposed to be a frame, but I didn’t measure correctly and cut too much fabric off the pattern. I was very glad to have the yellow base. Creating a floating cross stitch in the middle wasn’t so bad, unexpected, but it works. First time for everything!

I entered the wrong numbers in the design space for the Cricut, so the ‘s’ on ‘roses’ was cut off by time I was done trimming it back to fit the actual card base. As I was laying the frame on using double sided tape the paper bubbled up. I’m assuming in my rush to finish everything lots of things went wrong, but the card is bright and exciting to look at, which is all that matters.

Stitching

Started: October 21st
Finished: October 23rd

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full front of Life Begins at 40! card

laying down bottom view

Wake up and MAKEUP

CraftyK Leave a comment

Birthday two of the day. This card is for someone I have known since middle school and reconnected with a couple years back at the gym. What was even more amusing is we were in the same gym class in middle school and ended up joining the same gym as adults, and happened to be there at the same time. We’re not in a huge city, but not small either and it’s a 24 hour gym, so the chances of our meeting again was probably fairly slim.

Since that re-connection we have had some ups and downs in our adult relationship. Sometimes it’s hard being friends with someone who is trying to rise through the ranks of the Mary Kay sales force. I ended up joining as a way to save a few dollars buying skincare and also to help unit out.

the beginning

When this pattern came in my email from Daily Cross Stitch earlier this year I knew I would be adding yet another card to the ever growing collection this year. This is the 19th card made this year.

ampersand

As I was stitching this card I fell in love with the ampersand. I don’t know that I’ve ever really stitched one before, but I really liked it. It’s a really strange thing to enjoy looking at after stitching. The words are also done in modern fonts which also added to my wanting to make this card.

front of card angle

When I was working on the cross stitch portion of the card I really thought I would put it on black paper. Then I started going through some choices, one was black, and found I like how the pink popped so much more on the paper I ended up choosing.

corner close up

In the spirit of MK and all things sparkly I cracked out some pink glitter glue. Waiting for that to dry so I could put the card in the envelope was so hard! Although I had thought about glitter glue earlier on, I almost forgot until everything was assembled. I didn’t put it everywhere, but found some pink squares that could use some dressing up.

standing front view

I used double sided tape for the colored paper and foam tape on the cross stitch. The cross stitch is backed by interfacing fabric (really light stuff) to help hold it together after being cut.

Stitching

Started: May 12th
Finished: May 15th

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front of card layflat

Color the Rainbow

CraftyK Leave a comment

I may have gotten a little over confident on this one. I thought it would be extremely simple to finish in just a couple of days. Instead it took me around 2 weeks.

Most of the delay was my fault. I was studying for an exam and had to put cross stitching to the side for a couple weeks. The exam was out of town so while I was away I also wasn’t working on this.

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Once I got back I realized just how close to deadline I was. I’ve been working frantically through my last weekend before it needed to be sent trying to finish. I even worked on it while walking on the treadmill (didn’t go the greatest, but got me just a little closer).

I did finish late Sunday night getting everything assembled, photographed, and in the mail. This card is staying in town and actually not going all that far. I’m sure it will have a journey around town to get to its final destination though.

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This card is for a cousin of mine. When I saw this pattern it made me think of her. She is a teacher, but I think it was more the bright colors that drew me in.

I wanted those colors to really stand out so I chose a grey paper as my frame. I’m still not great at getting the work stretched correctly while mounting (you’ll notice it looks a little bubbled) though I did make many more attempts with this one.

I used my Cricut to cut the frame and write Happy Birthday! along the bottom. Overall I think this card turned out quite nice.

Pattern from dailycrossstitch.com.

Stitching

Started: January 13th
Finished: January 27th

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Flutterby the Butterfly

CraftyK Leave a comment

I started this pattern at Side Projects Club. It is because of this group that I have gotten through so many cross stitches the last couple of years. This year is turbo mode with all the cards I’ve been making.

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I found this pattern in a library book called Stitch Graffiti by Heather Holland-Daly. I enjoyed this book so much I bought it! I can only dream and aspire to create fun and creative patterns like she has, but for now I will continue with the ready-made ones. I have yet to venture off cloth, but I would like to try stitching on screen sometime, it never would have crossed my mind before reading her book.

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Although I’m not to the point of creating awesome designs, I did do my own thing for the colors. I don’t have the correct variegated thread, so I combined two colors that are close to create my own version of variegation. The colors work well together and stand out from the dark cloth.

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This is the first project that I am branching out from the usual white or cream colored Aida cloth and trying the dark blue. To make things even more complicated I thought I had purchased 14 count, turns out it’s 18 count. So this project got extra small very quickly. Luckily at Side Projects Club there’s lots of light and white tables to bounce light back to see the holes in the cloth. Working on this at home is a bit more of challenge.

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To finish this card I used E6000 to glue the corners to the paper. This thing isn’t moving at all! I think it ended up a little crooked, but overall it turned out very nice. I also used a small corner rounder tool per my mom’s suggestion to make this look a little softer.

This is a birthday card for someone I used to talk to a lot, but we recently had a falling out. I hope she gets it and enjoys, but I can’t be too surprised if it comes back to me as I am not certain of her new address and sent it to the only one I have.

Stitching

Started: July 14th
Finished: July 20th

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