Tag cardstock

laying top corner

Steampunk Stitched

CraftyK Leave a comment

Sometimes there are patterns that come through my email from Daily Cross Stitch that just scream, “This is for [enter name here]!” This pattern was one that did just that. I had a former co-worker from maybe 3 jobs or so ago that I still keep in contact with. She likes Steampunk, as do I, but she is much better at it. I’m more of a passive lover of the genre.

starting out

To get this pattern to fit on a regular sized note card I had to stitch it on Hardanger (22 count). If you remember from my Wine pattern I learned that 1 thread is much better than 2 on this cloth. I was super excited to have a cream almost antiqued Hardanger on hand, which goes perfectly with this mostly brown pattern.

side view top

For the background I knew I wanted to use my gears embossing folder I had purchased. It was just how to mount the stitching and what paper to use.

Eventually I settled on cutting out the stitching after using interfacing fabric to keep the edges from fraying. To make the card very 3D I not only embossed the back, but also used foam tape to mount the pattern.

top view embossing

The background is wallpaper. I think the colors work well with the overall feel and grunginess of this card.

front view standing

I really like how this one came together in the end. It seems like a very cohesive piece and can for sure double as art.

Stitching

Started: May 1st
Finished: May 8th

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full front

the otter stitching

Otter Love

CraftyK Leave a comment

The newest addition to the family by marriage loves otters…and Harry Potter. While Harry Potter is great, a little harder to come by cross stitch patterns. And for some reason I remember her otter love before HP.

I went searching for an otter pattern on Etsy and ended up with one from dailycrossstitch.com that is pretty adorable.

the pieces

There are lots of browns in this pattern, with pops of color with the pink and blue. It’s a very easy pattern to work which is good when you need to move through them quickly.

standing front view

This card ended up using a few new things I have learned about over the past year. First is the super new interfacing fabric that I think I mention every post now. The next is embossing powder for stamping.

The fun curves of this pattern lent itself to being one that is cut out and mounted. Since it doesn’t take up the full space I also decided to pull out some stamps. Then I read that the ink was the kind you can emboss with…and found I had bought powder called “Tinsel”. Knowing that Iris has mailed just glitter in an envelope before I couldn’t help but add some to the card.

close up of stamping

I haven’t figured out how to “clean up” the powder before running the heat gun over it making everything permanent. So this attempt looks messy to me along with some areas being heavier on the glitter than others. Overall it’s a cute card that came together nicely.

Stitching

Started: April 21st
Finished: April 29th

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front only

side view of card

Birthday Giraffe

CraftyK Leave a comment

When I asked my cousin’s wife what were some things he likes (I did prompt with animals) she came back with giraffe. I don’t think this is a typical animal that people love, but it is fitting as he is well over 6 feet tall.

parts for giraffe

I immediately thought of looking through my Precious Moments books for a giraffe pattern and found this one. For some reason I think of Precious Moments when I think of this cousin. No idea why. Still after drawing the pattern, working on the pattern, nothing comes to mind that screams we have some event together that would make me think of them.

standing card

I used my WinStitch program to recreate the giraffe and added Happy Birthday text using a built in font. After starting I realized I had placed the text way too far from the giraffe. Luckily the file was saved and I was able to move it over and reprint the pattern. I’m not good at winging it, otherwise I would have tried to remember how far over I wanted to move everything.

To finish this one off I used the interfacing fabric again to stabilize it. Then gave myself a little more breathing room while measuring the cutout for the frame. I cut the green paper using the Cricut. Then double sided tape to hold it all together.

top corner

I use double sided tape twice for these, once around the frame and line up the stitching in it, getting it as straight as I can. It is movable which is nice. Then I put tape around the edges of the cardstock. I carefully place the frame with the fabric adhered to it onto the cardstock base and keep it as smooth as possible to prevent wrinkles and bubbles. I was impressed this one laid out very nicely.

I did some trimming at the end to remove any white edges from showing. I think the blade is getting dull, had to run it a few times making the card smaller and smaller before it cut smoothly.

Stitching

Started: April 14th
Finished: April 20th

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just the front

Front of card standing

Love, Laugh, WINE

CraftyK Leave a comment

I am not a wine person. I never even graduated past a Moscato. I learned a little about wine at one of my previous jobs where I helped lay out a Wine & Food newsletter. I was then told that Moscato is for starting out, however not really what a true wine connoisseur would drink.

Love, Laugh, Wine

My aunt however is quite in the know on wines and loves visiting new vineyards to try new varieties and such things. Seriously I know nothing about this. I have been told I don’t even sample wine correctly (you spit it out?!). So based on her love of wine I found this pattern at dailycrossstitch.com to make for her birthday card.

This cross stitch was not my first venture into stitching on 22 count or hardanger fabric. I did learn that I have been going about it all wrong. I have been torturing myself stitching multiple patterns on 22 count using two pieces of thread. It’s extremely difficult, creates uneven lumpy stitches, and is overall quite aggravating. This was my fourth attempt at stitching on this size fabric.

 

close up of corner

Since the beginning of the year I have joined a Cross Stitch Club Facebook group. In this group people as questions such as, “How many pieces of thread do you use on 22 count?” Guess what the overwhelming answer is: ONE. Seriously! I only ventured off of 14 count kits last year so that’s one reason for not knowing this extremely helpful tidbit of info. After painstakingly stitching out the word Laugh in “bold” 2 thread. I finally decided to try 1. Just to see what happened. Holy crap it actually made stitching go so much faster! And the stitches were actually even. You can see the difference in the photo above.

The next thing I decided to do on this pattern was to correctly stitch variegated thread. Again something I learned about by seeing various people ask in the Cross Stitch Club group. Of course the part of the variegation I was on wasn’t very varied (have fun saying that three times fast), it still worked out giving a little bit of depth to the wine bottle label, see the photo below.

detail of stitching

Now that I have learned something new, that will make my life so much easier when I need to stitch on 22 count again.

Assembly of this card was pretty standard. I pulled out the Cricut to make the frame out of heavier purple glittery cardstock. The finished pattern was placed on interfacing fabric in an attempt to keep things from stretching and warping as I put it in the frame. I still don’t think I have perfected this as I can’t get things in straight and still need to pull and prod it, which is creating bubbles. Maybe I’ll figure that out by time this birthday card project is finished.

Stitching

Started: April 1st
Finished: April 6th

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Full front of card

close up of stitching

H is for Heinrich

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Remember the Lion for Liesel? This card is for her brother Heinrich.

Hippo start

These cards are a little different from my usual. I have a Precious Moments Alphabet book from the early 90s that has a cute image to go along with each letter. H is a “gender neutral” pattern with a hippo, the H is either in blue or pink depending on the sex of the person receiving it.

Hippo no backstitchUnlike many of the cross stitches I have worked on so far this year, this one required something called backstitching. I like to call it outlining as this makes more sense to most people.

Backstitching is done when you need more details in your pattern. As you can see this cross stitch looks a bit funny without any lines around the edges and even on the inside of the patter to bring out the details. It’s very 2 dimensional and not very clear without the details added.

Once the backstitching was completed It was time to add the interfacing to the back in hopes of keeping everything straight.

close up of glitter glue

I wanted to keep this card similar to Liesel’s and went with a blue paper for frame and blue glitter glue to finish it off. The blue paper I used is a bit on the thin side, almost like regular printer paper and less like a cardstock. It was from my collection of paper traditionally for scrapbooking. Because it was thinner and lighter I think that is why I had so much trouble with mounting anything well.

Full card standing

The cross stitch pulled up and to the right, not sure how it ended up stretch like that, but with the interfacing on it there’s not much to be done. I placed it in the frame as best I could and attempted to adhere it to the cardstock. This is when things really went wrong and the paper ended up bubbling creating the creases you see along the top and bottom corners on the right. These flaws make this a hand made project for sure.

Stitching

Started: March 22nd
Finished: March 31st

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Full front of Hippo card

from the top

Scholarly Cat

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When I asked my cousin what her sons like, I was told Larping. That is something I’m not sure has ever been captured in cross stitch form. I was also told they like cats (although one is allergic) and reading. Luckily these are things much more readily available in the cross stitching world.

all laid out

I found a pattern on dailycrossstitch.com with a cat sitting on a pile of books. This was the perfect fit! Logan is also off at college so the extra large books are also quite fitting for this stage in his life.

Yet again I found myself lost as to how I was going to assemble this card. The ideas aren’t coming like they were before. I’m in a Cross Stitch Club on Facebook and the day I finished this card she answered how she was able to cut around her patterns for cards and not have fraying.

Interfacing fabric. Who knew that you can make your own iron ons?! Luckily for me JoAnn’s was having a sale the weekend I learned of its existence, so I purchased a yard of the stuff to try for myself. Cost under a dollar with tax! Great price for trying out something new.

side view

You can see a little bit of separation of the interfacing fabric and the Aida cloth in the image above, but I don’t think it’s too bad for a first try. I was told it would be quite stiff, but it didn’t really do that to me. I think it was the kind of fabric I was sold, it was called “Lite” and I was told there were thicker ones, but the salesperson felt it probably wasn’t what I wanted. This seems to work ok, it holds well and give more “stiffness” to the piece than just tacking it on would.

from the side

The background is from my massive wallpaper collection. I thought the pattern fit a kind of Larping theme. It makes me think Medieval, something from a family crest maybe.

It was fun trying out a whole new way to mount a cross stitch to a card. Now I have square with frayed edges, mounted in a “frame”, and this, cut out no fray.

Stitching

Started: February 28th
Finished: March 10th

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full front of card

Birthday Puzzle

CraftyK Leave a comment

Kicking off the new year with the first of many cross stitch birthday cards.

To start things off is a custom design by me. My niece turned 19 today and is finishing up her first year of college. She also enjoys puzzles. I’ve been working through my collection to get them to her to work on (if they have all the pieces).

pattern, thread, Aida, scissors

Due to life distractions this cross stitch took a little longer than normal. The stitching was pretty basic, only two colors. I used a dark blue for the lettering. I tried variegated purple for the puzzle pieces. It wasn’t the variety in color that I had hoped for, but there is a little.

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Once the stitching was finished it was time to raid the paper drawer. This was harder to figure out what pattern or color to use since I didn’t have any sort of vision for this card beyond the cross stitch design.

In the end I chose polka dots. It just seemed fitting for my niece. I have no idea why. It seemed like a better choice than many of the options I looked at.

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Next up was cutting out the paper and square to frame the cross stitch. I have one ruler that has millimeters on it which was necessary for more precise measurements. I’m probably strange thinking that metrics are easier to use and measure with than inches. Could also be my dislike of fractions. Either way I was able to get the measurements needed to create my polka dot frame. The measurements weren’t perfect, but pretty darn close.

Stitching

Started: November 12th
Finished: November 20th

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set of 4 thank you cards

Holiday Thank Yous

CraftyK Leave a comment

Despite knowing all year when Christmas is I managed to put off creating my thank you notes. I also flat out didn’t do cards to send to people. I probably should, but if I make them it’s lots of work and my personal life is pretty boring so nothing to write lengthy prose about. Anyway, I digress.

These cards are to send to the 4 people who give me gifts in my old age (post 30). My mom, my mother-in-law, and my godparents. This year I enlisted help for my godparents gifts from my husband. He’s getting into woodworking and made something for each of them. Since it’s his thing, I don’t have pictures of the projects. So this will continue to be about the cards and my side ramblings.

I have stamped onto wallpaper before and decided to go for it again. Although it’s somewhat hard to see I did actually stamp on the pear card. I also took a Sharpie to it for an outline. For the white card I used black ink and stamped right onto the wallpaper. I had to wait awhile before adhering it to the cardstock because it was starting to bleed a bit. I barely touched it and it started to run up the lines in the wallpaper. After letting it sit for a while I went ahead and finished up making it into a card. The pear I didn’t seem to have those issues, but you can barely see the text. It’s a little more visible in person depending on the angle.

For the other two cards I got out the handy Cricut. I was never good at cutting squares or any shape for that matter. Straight lines are hard and getting them the correct size is even worse. I used the Cricut to cut out my squares from pink and grey paper. I then took a red ink to stamp Thank You onto the pink paper and a dark blue ink I onto the grey. Then I used foam tape to adhere the paper to the wallpaper to give a more 3D appearance.

To attach the wallpaper to the cardstock I used double sided tape on all 4 cards. I didn’t have the time to mess with Yes Paste and get it all to stick properly. I hope to spend some time working on more wallpaper cards next year. Until then I have now created some cards for December and can complete my blog on 2018 Cards. I think I’ll do another blog for next year since I know I’ll have a lot of cards to make for my mom’s side of the family.

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flat lay 4 thank you cards

Elephant Love

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close up of 2 elephants with balloons

If you remember the elephant card I made for an August birthday, this one is quite different. This one I “designed” myself from different patterns I found for elephants and balloons. I did draw the grass myself. The happy birthday is a font from the WinStitch program I drew everything in.

close up of yellow balloon

I started this cross stitch on a Friday, did the majority of it at Side Projects Club on Saturday and finished up the back stitching on Sunday. Compared to the last card this one is much smaller and much easier due to the lack of quarter stitches.

Assembly came with some challenges. I have done enough of these to know that I would really prefer to get them in straight. I think I finally found a good way to accomplish this too!

Taking double sided tape I lined the edges closest to the hole I cut with the Cricut (well I cut the whole thing out of a 12×12 paper and scored it with the Cricut). Then I started to place the fabric down into the opening. I have learned that the fabric does not adhere to the tape right away, so there is opportunity to move it around to try and get it as straight as possible. I try to use the holes as a guide.

front view of the cross stitch in the card

Since it’s not the stickiest thing ever it’s hard to truly “stretch” the fabric across without pulling it off somewhere, I was at least able to get it pretty darn close. Now it’s remembering this technique for the next one I do with a cut out…

To really hold it in place I cut out another piece (with the Cricut) the from the 12×12 page slightly smaller than the 4.25″ x 5.5″ side and used more double sided tape along the outer edges of that piece to adhere it to the inside of the card. From what I can tell this worked well since I had enough clearance on each side and the fabric is completely underneath.

Stitching

Started: October 18th
Finished: October 21st

 

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close up of blue elephant and word happy