Tag purple

Secret Snowflake

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The company I work for decided to take a twist on Secret Santa and offered a Secret Snowflake. On a bit of a dare, I decided to take part.

The total limit was $20 and gifts are to be dispersed across 8 work days. It wasn’t specific if you are supposed to do multiple things, but I decided to get something for each day.

I did stick with the spend limit with three days of handmade using materials already on hand. I’m not sure how many people at work know I do crafting on the side, but I think many more know now.

To learn more about our Snowflake, everyone filled out a form answering questions about favorites, likes, dislikes, that kind of thing. My person likes Universal Monsters, crows, and Pokémon. The other things were related to food and drinks, which was where my $20 went.

I made a journal/sketchbook (the last time I attempted this was 2013), this attempt went much better. I created it with two covers so my Snowflake wouldn’t have to pick where to start. I also figure they could make a second book if desired. For the covers I used the Universal Monsters and a crow. Because of the general theme, the parts that pull off worked out great.

The next thing I made was a window cling cut out of a crow. This I packaged up and did not photograph before delivery. I happened to have black window cling since I got my Cricut in 2017. It was never opened, so I took this opportunity to give it a try. I hope it’s clingy!

The last handmade was for the Pokémon theme. I did use Co-Pilot to help me figure out which Pokémon would be pink, purple, or green (favorite colors) and small enough to fit in the mini keychain I have. I found a site with lots of free individual characters and pokeballs. Something I learned was there are multiple pokeballs, which took me back to Co-Pilot to ask what you catch a Ditto with. Which is how I landed on stitching an Ultra Ball. Turns out the Ditto is pretty cool.

All the gifts were a hit. I’m glad I chose to participate. It was the highlight of my week for sure. All the planning and plotting to keep my secret and deliver above expectations.

Stitching

Ditto started: December 8, 2024

Ditto finished: December 11, 2023

Ditto stitching time: 5.5 hours

Ultra ball started: December 12, 2024

Ultra ball finished: December 13, 2023

Ultra ball stitching time: 1.75 hours

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Make Your Own Kind of Music

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I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to finish this one before my friend turned the big 4-0, in November. Clearly I was on top of it with plenty of time to spare.

I’m writing this in late July and you will be seeing this in November. I don’t want to share it early even though I’ll be sending it in a few days.

My friend is not only an amazing photographer and writer, she also has a passion for music. I found this pattern on dailycrossstitch.com and just had to make it for her.

I did a little modification of the pattern. For the arrows I used variegated thread to add some dimension. I also added backstitching around the word music. It wasn’t standing out enough against the lines.

I used a purple sparkle paper for the frame and cut it out with my Cricut. The back of the cross stitch is stabilized with interfacing fabric.

Stitching

Started: March 30

Finished: April 10th

Stitching time: 11.25 hours

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Mailbox Stamp and Color

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This card is involves a few of firsts for me. A sort of first to start things off, I thought I was going to make 2 of these. Instead of my usual one-of-a-kind. I had a piece of paper to stamp on big enough to stamp twice. I tried, but I underestimated how much ink was left and had a really faded version 2.

It all turned out ok, I used that second try to test out colors.

  • First stamp that needs to be colored
  • First time using alcohol ink markers. (didn’t even know they were a thing until about a month ago)
  • First time adding a stamped message to the inside

I learned that maybe spending a bunch of money on markers that have an extra fine tip might be worth it in the future. Most of the areas are so tiny I couldn’t color in the lines very well. I bought a fairly cheap set on Amazon. The review compared them to the name brand kind that have tri-tips, these only have chisel and brush.

Here’s the inside. It came in the box with the stamp on the front. Based on the packaging I’m pretty sure they are Stampin’ Up. I’m sure others have used this set and made much fancier cards.

I also took a photo from the bottom to show the depth with the foam tape. The wallpaper and cardstock paper are taped down and the cardstock with the stamping and coloring is mounted with foam tape.

I think this card looks awesome and it’s part of my personal collection. Someday the right person will come along that I just have to send it to them.

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Painted Birthday

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Due to other things going on this year I haven’t had the time to make many cards. This one is for my mom. I thought I could come up with something fairly quickly to make and decided to grab some paints and glitter glue.

I picked the paint colors, then went to my stencil box to see what might look good. Once I was ready to start I decided I wanted to use a sponge and not brushes for this stencil. I like the look of it better and have an easier time with gradients.

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The lettering is sort of hand drawn. I have so many fonts (I download too many and have even found a site with commercial use fonts that are sometimes free or on sale). I found this handwriting type font and designed how I wanted ‘Happy Birthday’ to be laid out  in InDesign and printed it out.

I have a really old light table, not very big, yellow plastic thing that my mom got a garage sale for my brother. This thing is well over 30 years old by now, just needs a new light now and then. I used that to draw the lettering with my India Ink pens. I had to buy them for a college course (not 100% why they are so special, but they work well).

After I was done with the lettering I worked on the butterfly. I really like how it turned out. I wasn’t going to blend the colors, but I like that it happened. After I waited a little bit for it to dry I added the glitter glue. Black on the letters as highlights and “clear” I guess you could call it for the background and butterfly.

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top of 40 card

Life Begins at 40!

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Oh where to start with this one! It was stitched quickly, but the card making was one problem after another. This one was quite improvised due to extreme time constraints. When a birthday lands on a Sunday I lose a day. My goal is to have it arrive via mail on Saturday. Luckily it is only going a few blocks away (I think).

40 in progress

This card is going to a former co-worker of mine. We took walks pretty much daily for several months. During those walks I learned she was turning 40 this year. After acquiring several new cross stitch books this year I came across this pattern and decided that it would be the 50th card for the year. While it’s more like 45th in order of birthdays, this one brought me to a total of 50 cards to be made in 2019.

backstitching 40

Since this person shares a birthday with my brother the pressure was on to get them both done in time. And a mad rush to the post office to get them out on time! This pattern had backstitching which slowed down progress a bit.

The stitching and interfacing fabric went just fine for this one, it was the actual card part when things fell apart. Remember, a bit rushed on time for this one.

This person is super positive and bright. Even if things are going terribly, she’ll have a smile on her face and do whatever it is that needs doing. So a bright yellow paper for the card base what what I chose. This card is a 4.25×5.5, minus a little due to measuring errors.

angled view from bottom of 40 card

The butterfly paper was supposed to be a frame, but I didn’t measure correctly and cut too much fabric off the pattern. I was very glad to have the yellow base. Creating a floating cross stitch in the middle wasn’t so bad, unexpected, but it works. First time for everything!

I entered the wrong numbers in the design space for the Cricut, so the ‘s’ on ‘roses’ was cut off by time I was done trimming it back to fit the actual card base. As I was laying the frame on using double sided tape the paper bubbled up. I’m assuming in my rush to finish everything lots of things went wrong, but the card is bright and exciting to look at, which is all that matters.

Stitching

Started: October 21st
Finished: October 23rd

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full front of Life Begins at 40! card

card laying down, top in focus

A Red Haired Mermaid

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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

cake cat laying down angled

A Cat Made Cake

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This card finishes out one of my cousin’s families. This particular card is for his wife. While I tried to make it the same size as the other cards, the stitching ended up being too large and had to be placed on a 5×7 card.

If you would like to see the rest of the family cards you can find my cousin, his oldest, and youngest. I can’t remember which one is allergic to cats, but they used to have a couple. I wanted to give them all cats they can keep. And probably includes some authentic cat fur in the mix, because, well, my cats like to leave their hair on everything!

before backstitching on cake cat

I got the pattern for this card a long time ago off of the cross-stitching website. It is no longer available and I have been unable to find another copy. I believe it is in an old copy of The World of Cross Stitch magazine, but I have no idea how to get a hold of one since I am not in the UK.

This is the most adorable pattern and one of my favorite cards I have made this year. This one took a little longer than I expected. There is a lot of detail in it. So many colors to create all the shading. Then the backstitching took quite a while, but I finished that on a plane ride. Backstitching really does make a difference.

front angle of cake cat

I used the Cricut to cut out the frame, the paper is from a book of scrapbook paper I bought at one point. It turned out a lot nicer than I expected when I picked the paper.

Stitching

Started: September 13th
Finished: September 26th

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front of cake cat card

eye of peacock feather

A feather for your card

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This card is for my cousin’s wife. Last year my cousin got a card with a clown on it. Not a scary clown, just a silly one that had a Happy Birthday banner. Their daughter got her card this year the flamingo. Her mom loves all things peacocks, so I went on a search for a pattern for her card.

This pattern came from dailycrossstitch.com, it’s a bit on the artsy side, but you can still mostly tell it’s a peacock feather.

To be a little different I decided to pull out some rayon thread I have to stitch the middle purple and the darker green. This meant picking a different lighter green. The rayon I had was a true green color, not the turquoise usually associated with peacocks.

This cross stitch was mainly worked on in the car, lots of car travel lately which means getting better at working on this on the go.

I used a heavy scrapbooking paper that has some sparkle to it for the background and cut out the feather as best I could. Then using foam tape I mounted it to the purple background.

Stitching

Started: September 8th
Finished: September 12th

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full front of peacock feather card

ice cream card laying down

We ALL scream for ICE CREAM

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The actual cross stitch on this card is probably the smallest one I have done all year. When I asked my cousin’s husband some things she likes one of his answers was ice cream. I remembered I had saved this pattern years ago from a cross stitching website that had free patterns from their magazine available. It’s so cute I knew it was just what I needed.

close up of ice cream cone

Since the stitching wasn’t going to take up a huge space on the card I wanted to add some stamping. This included a few firsts for me. I tried out a white pigmented ink. I have a purple fine glittery embossing powder that I decided to try out on the white ink. I still haven’t figured out how to keep the powder on just the ink and not loose it all from everywhere, so it looks a bit messier than I intended. I’m still trying to figure out this whole embossing thing.

focus on stamping

It was fun to watch this one as the heat gun finally started to solidify the powder. It did take a really long time and the paper warped. The card was under a big book to try and flatten it out before sending.

ice cream cone with no backstitching

I also remembered to photograph it before the backstitching. It’s amazing what some outlines can do to a pattern. You can tell what it is, but it really pops once it’s done. I almost forgot the stem, but luckily realized it before I put everything away.

front top view of ice cream card

I know I said that I did some new things, another new thing was mixing stamps. I didn’t want a bunch of white space so I went through my stamps to find something to fill in the space with. I chose the lollipop as it’s another type of sweet. In the same set I found this small confetti looking stamp. I don’t know that I used it as intended, but I tried to put it around in different areas to fill in the space. I feel that I could have done some more maybe? It’s like using a brush in Photoshop, but this can’t be undone. Once you stamp, it’s on there. Makes me scared to use it.

So this was a first in trying out layering different elements. The different ink colors, stamps from different sets, and embossing some ink. I took some hot pink construction paper to put behind the ice cream cone. The pink paper is attached with double sided tape and the cone is attached to that with foam tape. I think I might have a foam tape addiction? I’m using it on just about every card that doesn’t have a frame. I felt that the yellow paper would mean losing the pink of the ice cream, so I made the shadow thing behind it to bring back the pinks.

Stitching

Started: September 7th
Finished: September 7th

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full front of ice cream card

Front of card standing

Love, Laugh, WINE

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I am not a wine person. I never even graduated past a Moscato. I learned a little about wine at one of my previous jobs where I helped lay out a Wine & Food newsletter. I was then told that Moscato is for starting out, however not really what a true wine connoisseur would drink.

Love, Laugh, Wine

My aunt however is quite in the know on wines and loves visiting new vineyards to try new varieties and such things. Seriously I know nothing about this. I have been told I don’t even sample wine correctly (you spit it out?!). So based on her love of wine I found this pattern at dailycrossstitch.com to make for her birthday card.

This cross stitch was not my first venture into stitching on 22 count or hardanger fabric. I did learn that I have been going about it all wrong. I have been torturing myself stitching multiple patterns on 22 count using two pieces of thread. It’s extremely difficult, creates uneven lumpy stitches, and is overall quite aggravating. This was my fourth attempt at stitching on this size fabric.

 

close up of corner

Since the beginning of the year I have joined a Cross Stitch Club Facebook group. In this group people as questions such as, “How many pieces of thread do you use on 22 count?” Guess what the overwhelming answer is: ONE. Seriously! I only ventured off of 14 count kits last year so that’s one reason for not knowing this extremely helpful tidbit of info. After painstakingly stitching out the word Laugh in “bold” 2 thread. I finally decided to try 1. Just to see what happened. Holy crap it actually made stitching go so much faster! And the stitches were actually even. You can see the difference in the photo above.

The next thing I decided to do on this pattern was to correctly stitch variegated thread. Again something I learned about by seeing various people ask in the Cross Stitch Club group. Of course the part of the variegation I was on wasn’t very varied (have fun saying that three times fast), it still worked out giving a little bit of depth to the wine bottle label, see the photo below.

detail of stitching

Now that I have learned something new, that will make my life so much easier when I need to stitch on 22 count again.

Assembly of this card was pretty standard. I pulled out the Cricut to make the frame out of heavier purple glittery cardstock. The finished pattern was placed on interfacing fabric in an attempt to keep things from stretching and warping as I put it in the frame. I still don’t think I have perfected this as I can’t get things in straight and still need to pull and prod it, which is creating bubbles. Maybe I’ll figure that out by time this birthday card project is finished.

Stitching

Started: April 1st
Finished: April 6th

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Full front of card