A Red Haired Mermaid

This card is going to my best friend’s step daughter. I made cards for her own children and now that she remarried I have added on 2 cards this year for her step-kids.

I’m not quite sure how old this little girl is, but I was told that Ariel is her favorite character. I was so excited to find this mermaid pattern in a book of small designs.

pre-backstitching of mermaid

This design may be small, but it is detailed! The tail alone has 3 different colors. I didn’t go bright red for the hair, but the idea is there of who the mermaid can be. The mouth was supposed to be another french knot, I thought that was weird and tried stitching on a smile instead.

top view of open card

I went simple with this card and decided I wanted to do the frayed edges again, something I haven’t done in a while. Once I learned about interfacing fabric the frayed edge design idea went by the wayside. I did use interfacing fabric on this and still pulled off some ends for the frayed look.

I started with a 3×3-inch piece of blue 14 count Aida, so there wasn’t much side to work with. I also decided to use pink paper for the card base since it’s going to a young girl. The background is a piece of wallpaper that has silver dollars on it. This is a different version of the paper that I used for my husband’s card earlier this year.

I also didn’t place her in the center, but off to the top right a little and angled. I wanted to still show the silver dollars. I mounted the cross stitch to the wallpaper using foam tape. The wallpaper is attached to the cardstock with double sided tape.

Stitching

Started: September 29th
Finished: September 30th

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full front of mermaid card

Fish in the Sea

This card is for a cousin (married into the family) that I have only met a couple of times. I called her husband to get some ideas of things she likes. I have heard about some from others, but decided to ask someone closer to her for ideas.

During the conversation I learned that she likes to scuba dive. I had seen this pattern on the cover of an old cross stitching magazine I have and immediately thought it would make a great pattern for a card. I wasn’t able to use their full pattern as it was too big, but I pulled this smaller section to use for the card.

fish card laying down

On this card I did backstitch as I went. The crunch for time is on and I have to change up how I work a little bit.

fish under the sea

 

For the frame I used a thicker wallpaper that has some sparkle in it. I wanted to make sure to use wallpaper because she sells luxury custom built homes. Wallpaper seemed like the perfect touch to finish this card. As usual the frame was cut out with the Cricut.

 

Stitching

Started: September 2nd
Finished: September 4th

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full front of fish card

Palm Tree Island

This card is for my husband. And yes, I took it to work and had it mailed back to the house. The best part, we get to keep one of the scratch n’ sniff stamps I bought.

pull back of side

I sort of tried to hide the making of this one. He’s not really a suspicious person, so I think he’ll be surprised. I’m posting this late so he doesn’t see the Twitter post before he gets to open it.

For this one I needed to start while out of town, so there’s no “beginning” photo like I have done for the rest of these. Not that those photos were very exciting. Also in my rush to get done I didn’t take a photo pre-backstitching.

the bottom

Overall this was a pretty simple card. I did have some trouble with the birds. One didn’t fully stay anchored. So right before I used the interfacing fabric I pulled it tight and ironed it in place. Should stay in place now.

view of left side

The pattern called for yellow variegated thread for the sun, beach, and border. This was interesting to remember to work one stitch at a time. I’m so used to rows and rows.

super top view

I knew I wanted to cut out the pattern and use foam tape to hold it to the card, but the paper for the card was harder to decide on. I ended up finding some silver dollar wallpaper border sample that worked really well. I had a couple of color options and went with the lighter one so the stitching could really stand out.

Stitching

Started: June 21st
Finished: June 26th

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full front of card