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close up of stitching

H is for Heinrich

CraftyK Leave a comment

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 side

Stormtrooper Line Up

CraftyK Leave a comment

My nephew Ben is going to start amassing quite the collection of Star Wars cards from me. I made one for his birthday last year and another for May 4th. Now he will have a more intricate card with Stormtroopers cross stitched on it.

This card is part of my 2019 project to finish one cross stitch card for every member of my mom’s side of the family who is over the age of 5 (had to draw the line somewhere). I am now in February and getting them done about a week before they need to arrive.

the pieces

This pattern came from an official Star Wars cross stitch book. While it is available in Whole Foods, I went with Amazon (same difference right?) since it was slightly cheaper. I recreated the pattern in WinStitch so I could mark the stitches off as I went. The book doesn’t stay open the best either, so this was the easiest way to work.

It took a few days to complete the whole thing. Dark fabric 18 count is hard to work on! You need so much light to really see what the heck you’re doing. The black was even harder to see. Luckily a few days before I started my husband needed extra light and borrowed my knock-off ice light. After much frustration I remembered the light was in the next room and grabbed it for my purposes. Boy did it make a difference!

the 'troopers

I was able to see what I was doing and finish stitching with much more ease. After I finished that part I pulled out the handy Cricut to cut my frame and text.

For the frame I wanted to have the cutout closer to the top of the card and give a little breathing room around the heads.

The text I did in Star Jedi font (pretty sure it’s on dafont.com) and added the lines at the top and bottom. I decided to do one long line of text and probably should have split it up. I think it still looks ok the way it is. Not sure that I got it straight though, I tried a few times laying it down before going with it.

inside

On the inside of the card I used a couple of pages from an old daily calendar. I’ve been using these for my Star Wars cards and felt it was another good use of them just to add some color to the inside.

Stitching

Started: January 30th
Finished: February 3rd

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front of card

the cross stitch

Yellow Bird

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This little bird is tiny and somehow there are 13 different colors! I couldn’t believe it as I was collecting the thread/floss for this project. I must admit it looks pretty lifelike now that it’s done, so all those color changes were worth it.

the beginning

This card is for my aunt whose birthday is today. I’m not sure on her age and feel it’s not appropriate to share anyway. She loves to photograph the birds that come to her backyard to eat and if they found a home in a birdhouse, sleep over. I am pretty sure I have seen some sort of black and yellow bird in her photos and this one made me think of her.

As you can see below this pattern came together extremely quickly, which is good because I was very much behind (and still am) on getting these done in a timely manner.

Because of the size I decided before I began this one would not be “framed” as I have done to many of the other patterns. I wanted to use my embossing machine again. I have a folder (I think that’s what those are called) with happy birthday all over it that I wanted to use. It’s similar to the Purple Morpho from last year.

 

Instead of using scrapbook paper I went with wallpaper. I did two colors and discovered that the softer less “papery” wallpaper does not emboss. I wasn’t sure how it would go and I was happy with either as the background, the silver won.

For mounting I used a small piece of grey paper foam tape mounted to the card then used some double sided tape and E-6000 for attaching the fabric to the paper.

Something I learned while studying for my CPP exam was that if you want to show texture, light from the side. So this go-round of highlighting the embossing on a card I was able to show better what it looks like.

the embossing

Stitching

Started: January 28th
Finished: January 29th

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cropped in full card view

Young Chef

CraftyK Leave a comment

When looking for patterns for this project of cross stitch cards for my mom’s family I found most at dailycrossstitch.com. The patterns are pretty simple and small which works perfectly for cards. I don’t even think the patterns have backstitching or odd stitch sizes.

This is going to be a huge help with getting around 40 cards (might be over that?) done this year. January and June are the busiest months for birthdays so in between I need to keep cranking these cards out.

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This card is for a second cousin of mine. His mom already has her card. Her son, while an avid football player, also enjoys cooking and baking. If I recall correctly he now has a Kitchen Aid mixer to aid in his baking endeavors.

So for his hobby of being in the kitchen I chose a chef pattern. I am trying very hard not to have a repeat pattern. Having many avid football fans in the family makes that a little more challenging and requires a little sleuthing to find additional interests.

I have many papers, but it was hard to find one that said “food” or “chef”. I ended up with a brown checkered pattern which mimics a traditional picnic blanket or pizza restaurant table cloth. This is actually wallpaper. I can’t imagine having something so dark on a wall, but I guess that’s why it’s now discontinued. It works well and doesn’t detract too much from the actual cross stitch.

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To cut the paper I used my handy Cricut. It’s not perfect, but it gets the job done and I’m able to place the pattern neatly in the newly created frame. I mounted all of this with double sided tape onto my standard white cardstock.

Stitching

Started: December 31st
Finished: January 6th

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Stencils & Paint

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So who knew that using a stencil with paint could be so challenging?

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I don’t hold the stencil down enough, but each flower I stenciled onto this card with paint is a little different. I did chose a very light paint color to add to this. I was going for a more blended look than something bright that would stand out more.

I think the light grey is a nice compliment to the overall paper colors. I was toying with an orange color until I went to look at it and found it was more construction orange than pastel.

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The flower second from the bottom is the closest to the stencil I used. Once I pulled up the stencil I wished I had done this card the other way with the large flower on bottom for better balance. That feeling could also be from the excessive amount of paint that ended up bleeding out making the petals blend together more. The downside to using such a light color and not being familiar with paint. I thought nothing was happening, oops.

I am continuing to use a makeup sponge for painting with stencils. I learned this trick from an Introduction to Art Journaling class on CreativeLive (seriously check them out, On-Air classes are free to watch!). To be honest it is that class (which was On-Air one day) that got me started on this new way of working on wallpaper cards.

It’s amazing how sometimes the most random thing can spark an idea for a completely different project.

Happy crafting!

 

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