Tag butterfly

Painted Birthday

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Due to other things going on this year I haven’t had the time to make many cards. This one is for my mom. I thought I could come up with something fairly quickly to make and decided to grab some paints and glitter glue.

I picked the paint colors, then went to my stencil box to see what might look good. Once I was ready to start I decided I wanted to use a sponge and not brushes for this stencil. I like the look of it better and have an easier time with gradients.

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The lettering is sort of hand drawn. I have so many fonts (I download too many and have even found a site with commercial use fonts that are sometimes free or on sale). I found this handwriting type font and designed how I wanted ‘Happy Birthday’ to be laid out  in InDesign and printed it out.

I have a really old light table, not very big, yellow plastic thing that my mom got a garage sale for my brother. This thing is well over 30 years old by now, just needs a new light now and then. I used that to draw the lettering with my India Ink pens. I had to buy them for a college course (not 100% why they are so special, but they work well).

After I was done with the lettering I worked on the butterfly. I really like how it turned out. I wasn’t going to blend the colors, but I like that it happened. After I waited a little bit for it to dry I added the glitter glue. Black on the letters as highlights and “clear” I guess you could call it for the background and butterfly.

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top of 40 card

Life Begins at 40!

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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

Purple Morpho

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Today’s my cousin Rhonda’s birthday! Her nonprofit logo is a purple butterfly, so I took the pattern of a Blue Morpho and turned it into a Purple Morpho.blue morpho with opened wings

About the card

cloth, thread, pattern

After working on so many cross stitches that take weeks if not months (and a few a while back pretty sure years…) these last couple of cards have been a wonderful “break”. The base design I used for this butterfly was from Donna Kooler’s Cross Stitch Designs book. I recreated it in WinStitch so I could mark off what I finished, and change the butterfly from blue to purple.

While I was at Joann’s a few weeks ago I found thread that looked to be sparkly thread. Once I cut it and definitely once I started using it, I’m pretty sure it’s filament. Of course that didn’t stop me from using it like thread the way I wanted to and add some sparkle to my butterfly.

close up of stitching

Like the Care Bear I thought I was finished and I got so excited I almost forgot to finish the back stitching on this one! I finished all the wing details and completely spaced the outside. I woke up the next morning and it hit me that I wasn’t actually done.

Once I finished the back stitching for real I began collecting all the pieces to put together the card. While I was working on the cross stitch I decided I wanted to used one of my new birthday embossing folders. I pulled out my paper drawer and thought I was going for one foil embossed paper I have and instead ran across the butterfly paper (still foil embossed).

detail shot of the embossing

Although the colors match nothing in the cross stitch I loved the butterfly theme. I used that as the background and embossed it using the happy birthday folder I have. It’s fairly hard to see and photograph, but you can feel it.

To help the cross stitch stand out more I chose a neutral color to mount using foam tape to the card. The cross stitch is attached with some double sided tape in the middle and E-6000 on the edges. That stuff is powerful and the butterfly won’t be going anywhere.

side view of card

So there you have it! That’s how this card came together in just a few days.

 

Stitching

Started: October 22nd
Finished: October 25th

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Flutterby the Butterfly

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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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Focused

CraftyK 1 Comment

UPDATE: It’s completed and framed. (And I’ve already begun on the next one). The framing wasn’t exactly as I hoped it would turn out, but overall I think it looks pretty sharp.

butterfly flower crossstich

 

I haven’t been forgetting to post about what I’ve been up to. I’ve been very focused on one project. My youngest niece was born at the beginning of February and since Christmas I’ve been working on a cross stitch for her.

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I’ve made a lot of progress this last month, trying to finish before photography picks up as the weather warms up.
I’ve also been to the store a couple times to pick up more floss, this may not look big, but it’s a little over 8×10 and has very small stitches.

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This is my progress now. Looking much better than at the beginning of the month. I’m hoping to start outlining by the first half of April.