Tag hand made

L is for Liesel

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This is a project I have thought about doing for years. I met my friend about 5 years ago, she already had her two children at the time around 6 and 3 years old. They were past the point of making birth samplers, but I wanted to make them something.

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During an estate sale my mom picked up some Precious Moments cross stitch books, one of them being the alphabet book. While some of the images with the letters would today be seen as offensive (I is Indian…N for girl is Nurse…M for boy is Mexican and for girl Mom…). I digress…The L in this case for boy and girl is Lion. So I was happy to move forward with creating this without worrying about offending someone.

When I started I thought this would be a large image because the pattern is pretty good sized. Once I went to cut the fabric I was in for a surprise. This pattern would fit on a card! So a card it will be.

Once I got through the lion (color changes and quarter stitches everywhere!) this project went pretty fast. This is also one of the few projects that I mostly used the correct DMC colors for. I haven’t done many projects with brown, especially light browns and tans, so I needed to go hunting for the real thing.

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After I finished assembling the card it looked a bit plain. Since this is for a 10 year old I thought maybe it needed a little something extra. I went into the spare room with all the random things and saw my glitter glue collection. That was the answer! I think it turned out pretty good for having the cats help me.

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Stitching

Started: June 16th
Finished: July 13th

Follow along on Snapchat!

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Happy Birthday Clown

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This cross stitch was started 6/3 and finished 6/16. I needed a fast turn around so it could be mailed to my cousin in Texas.

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the beginning

Everything starts as a blank canvas. This is the first time I have cut enough fabric that I didn’t have to worry if I would stitch right off the side. I’m learning and making progress making non kit cross stitches.

I chose this pattern from a library book I checked out. My cousin was really into clowns as a kid, he had them all over his room. So when I saw this I immediately thought of him and looked up his birthday to make sure I could get it done for this year.

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The finished card

It took a little time to pick a color for this card. I wanted to keep it bright and not clash too much. I think it turned out just right. I even got the square cut just the right size. It may not have cut in the exact right spot I wanted, but it was the right size. Like I said, I’m learning and getting better at this!

If anyone is interested in a cross stitch card, I plan to start selling them once I finish my personal card list.

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Keep creating and don’t forget to follow along on my crafting adventures on Snapchat! You can see updates and works in progress before they make it to the blog.

90th Birthday

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There are only 2 living grandparents left in our family. They are my husband’s paternal side. On May 2nd his grandfather turned 90 years old! We went to Des Moines, IA that weekend to celebrate with him.

The night before I did a mad rush to make a card. It went over really well since they love art. Something handmade is different than the store bought cards. Apparently I did well enough that at first they thought it was purchased and were impressed it was so on the mark.

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I chose green paper since it’s (finally) spring. And my paint options at home are limited, so I chose a yellow because it would be bright enough to stand off the green. Not on purpose, but a bit John Deere nonetheless.

How it was made:

The letters were created in using the writing feature of the Cricut. The barn and tractor were cut using the Cricut as well. These are the gold adhesive, so they are shiny and stick to the paper easily.

 

 

This post uses affiliate links. This just means that if you go to the site and end up buying something I’ll get a small percent, this doesn’t increase the cost to you at all. 🙂

Birthday Panda

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The combination of two wonderful things, cards and cross stitch. This project combines both in a wonderful way. I got the Birthday Panda as a free chart from cross-stitching.com. When I saw it I just knew it had to go to my cousin Amanda for her birthday. (Which is today by the way)

She is finishing up her podiatry residency all the way on the East Coast (we’re from Nebraska) and I wanted to send her a little something special. I’m on a card making spree this year!

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The full card took probably 12 or so hours to make. And that’s not including the time to hunt down the colors for it (which aren’t all “correct”) I’ve been trying to use up thread from years of previous projects. I think it turned out pretty good.

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I was going to use ribbon at the bottom like the example, but found this adhesive rhinestone ribbon stuff at my mom’s in with her other ribbon and felt it was just perfect for this project. The next cross stitch card I am making my mom told me I have to use this on as well. (Coming August 2018) So you’ll have to wait a while to see that card.

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I used the Cricut to cut a box the size I needed, it took 4 cards (2 nice pink ones, then 2 practice sheets) to place the square where I needed it. Eventually I got it and away we went!

I used double sided tape to attach the design to the blue paper, then used the non cut half of my white practice card to hide the back of the design, using more double sided tape to hold everything together.

Feel free to share this on Pinterest or make one yourself!

Fur Babies Mug

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I’m trying to branch out my crafting. Joining a few Cricut groups on Facebook at my cousin’s suggestion really spurs the creative juices. When I looked at my calendar for February I saw that a friend of mine had a birthday coming up. She is like me and loves her fur babies as her children, so I came up with this idea to send her a birthday gift.

This is my first exploration into iron on. That I didn’t even iron on. Since receiving a Cricut for Christmas, I have been exploring new crafting techniques. With it I have upped my card game and now have decorated a mug.

Since I started learning more about stamping and embossing I ended up with a heat gun. I thought that might be a way to adhere the iron on pieces to a mug. And it actually worked! I have a lower temp heat gun for the embossing so it probably took longer than normal to get everything to stick, but it worked nonetheless.

fur baby mug_0218_01For this project I found a black mug and the white glitter iron on from Cricut. At first I was going to use vinyl, but then decided to try iron on after reading a couple blogs that made it seem possible to do.

 

Then I had to sit down and pick some fonts from my vast collection of them. Once I got that settled I laid it out in the Cricut design space. I made sure to attach the words “my”, “fur”, and “babies”. This is very important if you are using some sort of transfer tape. Which of course I didn’t. But I at least had the correct letters next to each other to easily transfer it by eyeballing it.

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Here’s a close up of the finished mug, everything looks like it’s stuck down!

Now it’s time to ship it off and hope for the best on how long it lasts. I will be sending it with a cute note about it being handmade and it shouldn’t go in the dishwasher or microwave.

 

 

A handmade Christmas

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cross stitch ornament

I wanted last year to be another year of handmade gifts. It was just coming up with those gifts that’s always the hard part.

Last year was a very big cross stitching year. I finished two large projects for a niece and nephew. Then I went on to create a much smaller cross stitch for the most memorable nurse aide at my dad’s hospice house. At that point I was just on a needle-working hot streak. I had never completed so many projects in one year, so why not a couple more.

My godparents are my two of my mom’s siblings. As you might guess from the photos my godmother got the Favorite Aunt ornament. This came about as a derivative work of the Thank You cross stitch ornament. I didn’t want to do wood burning for this project, so I raided my mom’s ribbon collection to find something that would match well with the design and make the ornament more complete.

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My husband helped me again with the cutting of a circle, this time a bit more careful to make it more circular as I did a much better job on my end this time. After losing my dad last year adding a wood element to both of the gifts for my godparents was something I hoped would be seen as extra special. They both liked my dad and have items made by him in their homes already.

This project is only about 3 inches wide or so, while my uncle’s ended up being more like 7 inches. Of course by time I finished it, Christmas was long over. As soon as I got the wood burning done and assembled everything on his it was wrapped up. So I don’t have photos of what I made for him. I will say that he does like it and has found a place for it.

And as with everything coming from my home, there are cat furs all over it.

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Back in Stitches

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Completed and custom framed cross stitch

My husband’s sister is way ahead of me with the kids than I am with the cross stitches for the kids. The third baby came a few weeks ago, the second one will be 2 at the end of April and I have not made much progress on this project.

Thanks to a co-worker I was introduced to the Meetup app. There is a group for side projects called The Side Projects Club. As long as it’s something you can do quietly they encourage you to bring your side project to work on. Most of the group bring laptops to work on coding, but a couple of us do things like cross stitch or knitting.

A huge thanks to that Meetup group. Without them I wouldn’t be working on this project at all, just getting mad at how much isn’t done. I was getting a bit burnt out on them, but it’s not as bad now. I am finally making some progress, and with getting back to this blog I thought I would use this as a secondary motivator to keeping pushing forward and making progress.

Update 5/11/17: Finished! Now it’s waiting to be framed, final photo coming in 2-ish weeks since frames are only ordered once per week on Wednesday. 

 

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Focused

Cross Stitch-An update

Cross stitch-not just an old lady craft

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.

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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.