Tag foam tape

Grandma turns 90!

CraftyK Leave a comment

It’s not everyday you know someone who has been around for nine decades. My husband’s grandma now has. We’re having lunch with her to celebrate along with other members of the small family.

Her husband also reached 90, however he didn’t live much longer after that. We didn’t know his birthday would be the last we saw him well. Such is life, some people get more of it than others.

The card I had made for my husband’s grandpa can be found here. I came up with the idea easily since he was a former farmer and was always asking about how the farming community has been doing in Iowa and Nebraska. The card was a hit, so I had some pressure with getting this second card right.

I went through a few different ideas. If you want to see some of the inspiration cards I found on Pinterest you can see my Birthday Card board here. The first idea I had involved wallpaper. The second idea had me trying to print a border from a design pattern pack I downloaded recently. This was my third attempt.

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I found cardstock that had flower like the printed pattern I wanted to use. (That did not go well at all!) I knew I wanted to use my scripty stamps for happy and birthday, which left the 90th. I wanted a big bold font and found that Impact does the job nicely. I used gold adhesive foil for the letters.

To make sure I spaced out my glitter glue dots evenly I created a dotted line box in Illustrator. In a way I designed the elements in there, then used some of it in the Cricut Design space for the cutting. Like the cutout behind the 90 I drew around the 90th typed in AI. I made the layers different colors so it would pull 2 mats for the Cricut to cut on (the paper and foil). I printed just the dotted line box and made sure it fit inside of the frame, since I wanted the dots inside.

Double sided tape and foam tape were used to put it all together. The stamping is directly on the cardstock base. The foil has weird patterning on it from the press n’ seal I used, it wasn’t holding and the sticky stuff really sticks when you push it on too hard. Does give it an interesting texture though.

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eye of peacock feather

A feather for your card

CraftyK Leave a comment

This card is for my cousin’s wife. Last year my cousin got a card with a clown on it. Not a scary clown, just a silly one that had a Happy Birthday banner. Their daughter got her card this year the flamingo. Her mom loves all things peacocks, so I went on a search for a pattern for her card.

This pattern came from dailycrossstitch.com, it’s a bit on the artsy side, but you can still mostly tell it’s a peacock feather.

To be a little different I decided to pull out some rayon thread I have to stitch the middle purple and the darker green. This meant picking a different lighter green. The rayon I had was a true green color, not the turquoise usually associated with peacocks.

This cross stitch was mainly worked on in the car, lots of car travel lately which means getting better at working on this on the go.

I used a heavy scrapbooking paper that has some sparkle to it for the background and cut out the feather as best I could. Then using foam tape I mounted it to the purple background.

Stitching

Started: September 8th
Finished: September 12th

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full front of peacock feather card

laying down ferret card

Dapper Ferret

CraftyK Leave a comment

We’re getting a little closer to the end of the #cardproject2019! This ferret was a pretty quick stitch. I got the pattern from dailycrossstitch.com. I chose to only do the Mr. Ferret part of the pattern. Partly for time, but mostly because of the space on the card.

This card is headed to my brother in law who once had a ferret toy. I was pretty young when my sister was dating him (and married him). I remember he bought this ferret toy that didn’t work right. I begged to go to the store with them while he got a new one.

This toy was a ferret attached to a ball, the ball was battery powered and when you turned it on it jumped around and looked like it was playing with the ball. I’m sure by today’s toy standards it’s pretty boring, but at the time it was the coolest thing ever.

side front view of ferret

Now you know the story behind this card. And I have no clue if he actually likes ferrets or not. When picking out cards I tried to find something that I know the person likes, or something that was from a memory I had with them to make the card personal. I chose the background paper for it’s pattern since my brother in law is a mechanical engineer. I was going to emboss dots on plain paper, then ran across this and changed my mind.

Stitching

Started: September 4th
Finished: September 7th

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full front of ferret card

top side

The PINK Flamingo is back!

CraftyK Leave a comment

It’s another multi-birthday day. My mom and a second cousin. This card is for my second cousin who loves flamingos. Not sure if it’s the color or just the love of the bird, but she’s loved them for years.

flamingo in progress

This one didn’t take too long to stitch, but my focus was a bit off and ended up with a small error in counting. It’s not really that noticeable, but the neck is a little farther over than it should be.

top half

I knew for this card that glitter glue was a must. I couldn’t find the color of paper I wanted so I went with construction paper in a hot pink (didn’t photograph so well) and some American Girl themed scrapbooking paper. I really wanted to emboss this one and then fill in areas with glue, it didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped, but it works.

bottom of flamingo

I used double sided tape for all the paper and foam tape for the cross stitch. The two papers are cut out and taped onto folded cardstock. I’ve found this works much better than trying to make paper be a card. Instead I try to assemble the card to a solid base. This also helps by making the inside and back of card white. Easy to write in and stamp the back.

Stitching

Started: July 13th
Finished: July 16th

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full front of card

top corner

Musical Owl

CraftyK Leave a comment

This card was a mostly last minute add-on to my Card Project 2019, yup I have named it and even hashtag the madness.

This card came about because my mom wanted help with a card she was going to make for my former piano teacher (not currently taking lessons) and good friend of my mom’s. She’s turning 70 this year, which happened to my mom last year. She received a mug from my aunt (her daughter in law made it) and wanted me to make one that said the same thing.

She also made a Scrabble® themed card with “seventy” on it. So I helped by using the Cricut to cut out the letters and my husband cut the pieces for her. She’s going to glue them to her card. I don’t have a picture of the Scrabble® card or anything for that part of the project. But her making a card spurred me to find a pattern that would be good for a card as well.

I went to dailycrossstitch.com first and found a pattern I liked. It’s a cute little owl with headphones and some musical notes around.

musical owl top

While my mom found some music note paper for her card, I went out and bought a music embossing folder. In the store I thought it was so cool! Well once I used it, I realized it must not have been made by someone familiar with music beyond the shapes. There’s no direction to it, the notes are going both ways, I’ll have to explain in the card that I know it’s not a legit song.

side view

I wanted the embossing to stand out, so I used a solid cardstock paper. Then I mounted the pattern using foam tape because I really like the stitching to pop off the card. Foam tape attachments are used on many commercial cards, and I enjoy it too.

 Stitching

Started: June 26th
Finished: July 2nd

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full front of card

close up of stitching

Rhino in a Tux

CraftyK Leave a comment

This card is for a cousin of mine who I hope likes rhinos. His company logo and business feature a rhino, and when I saw this pattern he was the first person who came to mind.

The Rhino in a Tux pattern cane be found at dailycrossstitch.com if you want to make it as well!

starting out Rhino in a Tux

This pattern has very few colors and was pretty easy to make. Counting the body takes a little bit of time, but once that first row is done you can base most everything off of that to eliminate long lines of counting.

The pattern calls for Anchor thread, I converted to DMC since that is what I have. CyberStitchers has a simple conversion chart in case you ever need it.

To get this pattern to fit on a smaller card I used 18 count Aida cloth. This time around I decided to also do it with only 1 thread for the x’s. It looks find in person, however I noticed in the photos the black looks a bit thin/see through.

front view standing

The whole thing was done with one thread, but for some reason black looks a little thinner than the rest. Probably the higher contrast between black and the white fabric. Either way, in person it doesn’t seem as thin.

standing side view

For mounting I used my mom’s really old interfacing fabric (I think). It didn’t make it stiff really, but seems to be holding up for all the trimming I did without any fraying. I used foam tape to mount the rhino to the front of the card.

Stitching

Started: May 15th
Finished: May 21st

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front view full card

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

close up of stitching

Gamer

CraftyK Leave a comment

Do you have a video gamer in your life? Maybe this pattern from dailycrossstitch.com is for you. I have a cousin who loves video games, and regular board games too. In his new house there is one bedroom that has bookshelves full of video games. Special chairs to sit in, big tv, and probably more than one console. I’m hoping one of those is an Xbox.

gamer colors

This pattern includes 4 different shades of grey plus black. unfortunately 2 of them are very close in hue. This makes it hard to see the knob things in real life, in the photos the color difference shows up better.

This pattern was easy and fun to work on. Once you get a few of the key pieces stitched it’s just filling in from there.

front of gamer card standing

I ended up cutting out the wallpaper background with a box cutter. To keep the edges of the fabric from fraying I used my new go to interfacing fabric on the back. A few cat hairs are now a permanent part of this card. I mounted the cross stitch using foam tape to stand off the card a bit.

This was a very straightforward uncomplicated card which was very nice.

Stitching

Started: April 7th
Finished: April 13th

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front of gamer card

from the top

Scholarly Cat

CraftyK Leave a comment

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