Grandma turns 90!

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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Birthday Care Bear

the completed project

Today is my best friend’s BIRTHDAY! When she told me she liked the Care Bears I found a cross stitch book on ebay and found this Birthday Bear! I knew I wanted to make it for her. It took a long time, but it’s done and delivered!

I started this cross stitch immediately after finishing the butterfly card. Since I survived using the dark 18 count Aida I assumed I could manage Hardanger (it’s also called 22 count). Boy was I wrong! And I overestimated my eyesight. I know it is small, but didn’t realize just how hard it would be to stitch. I could barely tell if there was a full x or not.

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I ended up at Joann’s for a LED magnifying glass on day 2 of working on this project. Even with using it I couldn’t see very well or my vision is going bad faster than I thought. I found it challenging to keep my eyes focused for very long. Not sure if this is common since I don’t know anyone who regularly works on Hardanger. If you have and have any tips please share!

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8/25/18: Although this milestone is hard to see, it is a milestone. I got the white on white almost complete. There is still some in the ears, but I don’t trust myself to count that far from my current position. I did however complete the belly area of the bear. The count is 1 off somehow, but I’m hopeful I can work around it without making the entire image seem off.

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8/25/18: progress report

After much more work on this I finally finished. The left side is definitely off, but that makes it unique and handmade right?

10/14/18: The stitching is complete!

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10/14/18: progress report, the main stitching is done

Now time for backstitching and well the french knots ended up not happening. I realized this as I started typing this.

I used the Cricut to cut out the frame to finish this. The total size is 8 in x 8 in. As much as I tried to make a card out of it I wasn’t able to. Five attempts at cutting a card from my A3+ paper and it just left my sticky board a mess. The paper shredded no matter what setting I used when trying to pull it off.

I was so desperate to finish this on time and with my other commitments I completely missed actually finishing everything on this project. Maybe it’s time to slow down a bit (which I know can’t happen with many stokes in the fire).

I used to do really well and not miss stitches or anything else. Now my work has mistakes everywhere, too many things happening that are distractions. I have many more deadlines to reach, so no slowing down now.

Stitching

Started: July 21st
Finished: October 16th

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Class of 2018

This was a fairly fast project. 2 colors and my first design out of WinStitch. I’m still figuring out the program, it seems a bit on the clunky side. I could just be spoiled by using Adobe for so many years and having many customization options at my fingertips.

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In progress

The framing took a while. I had to attempt to re-cut the matte, that didn’t end well. Then trying to get the tiny letters cut out with the Cricut to stick semi-straight onto the matte board was a frustrating mess. But hey now it’s done and it can be wrapped and packed.

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Stitching

Started: May 15th
Finished: June 3rd

Framing

Started: June 4th
Finished: June 6th

To the Graduate

This card is for my husband’s cousin. Today is his graduation party. I made this card the weekend before. Completely my own design! It was a bit of trial and error to make my own tassle.

This card I relied fairly heavily on the Cricut. The ‘Congrats’ is cut from Cricut‘s adhesive foil. The hat I drew and cut from wallpaper I have on hand.

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The tassel was an interesting thing to make. I have some jewelry making supplies from years ago when I thought I could make jewelry (ha!). Anyway I would say don’t use memory wire, that stuff is stuck in whatever size it comes in. I did find a more flexible wire that wasn’t silver that worked really well to hold the thread together. (You might recognize the colors from my Mother in law’s Mother’s Day card)

I am planning to make another of these cards for my niece. I know her school colors, so I will work on a tassel in those colors and maybe integrate them more throughout the card. But for something generic and graduation, black and gold works well.

For the inside of this card I cam up with a “brilliant” way to put money in without it falling out right away. Using mounting tape I attached my white cardstock piece to the inside of the card. Since it’s raised slightly I was able to slip some money in behind the message and it stays pretty well!

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This card has a lot of pieces that needed to be assembled, but I was able to do it all in maybe an hour or less. I was working on 4 cards that day and different pieces were cut and assembled at different times.

 


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Will you be my Valentine?

So that title is a bit misleading. As this is posting the day of, I can’t get a card out that fast. I wanted to share the 3 cards I did make this year and sent out in time to reach their destinations (Colorado and Georgia). The third card was for my husband, so it didn’t have to go through the rigors of the post office!

After posting on Snapchat my newly acquired glitter glue, and asking who might want a card, my husband’s cousin responded that she did. The problem was I couldn’t think of a card to make, so I asked her what holiday or something I should do. She reminded me that Valentine’s Day was coming up. So I got started coming up with some concepts after browsing the Cricut library and not finding something I wanted.

I thought it would be fun to show my concepts for these cards I drew up on my phone (the Note 8, no icrap in this house). Anyway…I find myself telling people quite frequently that I can’t draw worth crap, what’s in my head does not translate into hand-drawn pretties.

Georgia

This is the card that made it’s way to Georgia. It’s pretty flat so I wasn’t worried about it surviving. This was also the most frustrating of the three because I wasn’t able to truly capture what was in my head.

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First, I couldn’t find the heart ‘o’ in the fonts that I have. I could have sworn I had one, but was unable to find it and didn’t want to sort through all internet font options. But I think the teddy bear holding a heart does the trick.

Second, my sun ray type things just wouldn’t work for me. I thought I could do it, but things just didn’t translate, so it’s a bit messy for what I wanted.

Finally, the Cricut…Took me a few goes to actually realize it gives itself a margin where it won’t cut. So my card was placed right, but all the cuts are a good quarter inch to the right. I am hoping to be able to better compensate for this with future cards that have a peek through. Luckily I figured out the whole cut/draw on one mat thing so the drawing ended up where it should.

The paper background is discontinued wallpaper that has a silver sheen to it.

 

Colorado

This card I worried about so much. The button was thicker than I thought while I was picking it, and then the hot glue gun decided it wanted to create a huge glue glob.. you get the idea. I was very happy with the fact that I used some press n’ seal to get the adhesive foil up and onto the card. It took some patience, but worth it for not ruining the paper.

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It was my first time transferring something using some sort of sticky material. My first card had all the letters connecting so I just picked it up and placed it where I wanted it. I am also happy that everything came out fairly straight.

The base of the flower I drew in Illustrator and then had the Cricut draw it with a gold pen.

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The Husband

This card took the most in terms of intricacy. I also tried my hand at drawing in Illustrator…luckily it help clean up really bad curves. This is the only card with some outside inspiration. I saw this Pin once, thought I remembered the general idea, until just now, looking at it I really didn’t do mine the same at all. What caught my eye was the overlapping hearts and Love intertwined (at least that’s how I remembered it). I wanted to recreate something like that and ended up with my own overlapping heart with the word coming off that.

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I used the same wallpaper and gold glitter glue as the piece above. I also used my new stencils to create the bottom arrows with acrylic paint that looks good with the gold theme I have going on.

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After photographing these cards I realized (when it was at least 1am) that this card was missing something. It was the glitter on the arrows. It took so much effort to go to bed and not start working on “fixing” the card that night. I was good, got some zzz’s (I think) and worked on this first thing in the morning. It helped the card so much, finally coming together to look more professional.

 

 

2018 Valentine’s Day card set

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