Tag holiday

Nightmare before Christmas, well sort of…

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A family member who loves Nightmare Before Christmas unexpectedly came to town for Christmas. I was told two days in advance. The day before Christmas I decided to make her a keychain. I had patterns from a little Disney kit for Nightmare and a couple of them are small enough, if stitched on 25 count. My full coverage projects are coming in handy. Without those, I wouldn’t have 25 count fabric on hand.

Sound familiar? I did the same stitch count for my Secret Snowflake Pokémon keychain. It’s actually not that bad stitching so small. I do like the one strand of thread instead of two as well.

In addition to the two cross stitches I also made one of my first Christmas cards now that I have more stamps. Normally I don’t keep Christmas themed stamps when I get them, but I did save a few and they came in handy this year.

I used Winstitch to plot out the patterns from the itty bitty book. There was no way I could keep count from the original patterns. By doing that I was also able to put the stitching part into Pattern Keeper and I printed a huge copy for the backstitching. I think they turned out really nice.

I found a way to use my ho ho ho paper. It didn’t work so well with the cross stitch mouse, but for this card it worked out well. I’m pretty sure the Santa stamp is part of a retired Stampin’ Up collection. It was part of a large set of stamps donated to me in CD cases. I used my dotted embossing folder for the red paper on the right. I also added some glitter to Santa’s beard after I took the photo. This card is also larger than my usual at 5×7.

Stitching

Started: December 24, 2024

Finished: December 25, 2024

Stitching time: 2 hours Jack and Sally, 1 hour Zero

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May the Fourth Be With You

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For the first time I’m planning ahead! I thought about doing May 4th cards in March and finally got around to them mid-April.

These aren’t perfect by any stretch. I still can’t get placements correct on the Cricut. The biggest downfall of their design space when you go to make the item, you have to start over placing items every time.

T2S photography

The mishaps continue on the inside of the cards. I decided not to write with a silver marker as I did for my nephew’s birthday card (scroll to the bottom). Instead I attempted to make insets with cardstock. While the first one was too narrow and the second one was quite askew. Using double sided tape there’s no going back once you put it down.

Something else to work on and improve as I keep trying to create more appealing cards.

T2S photography

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.

cross stitch ornament

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.

cross stitch ornament