Gamer

Do you have a video gamer in your life? Maybe this pattern from dailycrossstitch.com is for you. I have a cousin who loves video games, and regular board games too. In his new house there is one bedroom that has bookshelves full of video games. Special chairs to sit in, big tv, and probably more than one console. I’m hoping one of those is an Xbox.

gamer colors

This pattern includes 4 different shades of grey plus black. unfortunately 2 of them are very close in hue. This makes it hard to see the knob things in real life, in the photos the color difference shows up better.

This pattern was easy and fun to work on. Once you get a few of the key pieces stitched it’s just filling in from there.

front of gamer card standing

I ended up cutting out the wallpaper background with a box cutter. To keep the edges of the fabric from fraying I used my new go to interfacing fabric on the back. A few cat hairs are now a permanent part of this card. I mounted the cross stitch using foam tape to stand off the card a bit.

This was a very straightforward uncomplicated card which was very nice.

Stitching

Started: April 7th
Finished: April 13th

Follow along on Snapchat!

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front of gamer card

Go Big Red!

I could make this exact card for just about anyone in my family. Almost everyone loves their football and the Huskers. It’s a Nebraska thing if you aren’t familiar.

starting out GBR

In my attempt to keep each card unique, only one family member is getting the beloved Huskers stitched onto a card. This card is for my cousin (and my mom’s godson). He’s been living in Texas almost 2 decades now, but that doesn’t take his love of the Huskers away.

To bring a little Huskers to him, this is the ONE Husker card that I am making this year. I found the pattern years ago with a random image search. I’m pretty sure it’s not licensed so hopefully I won’t get in trouble for it.

final card front standingThis card was pretty simple overall. I used the Cricut to cut out the card, background, and red pieces. This card is a little larger at 5×7. The pieces were too crowded looking on the smaller card. I wanted to do frayed edges and mount with foam tape.

top of card close up

While Huskers are known for red, they are also known for the Blackshirts, which is why I chose the marbled black wallpaper as the background on this card. I didn’t have red paper like I would normally use, but did have some red construction paper. I went old school and used that instead of buying scrapbooking paper.

I used double sided tape to mount the wallpaper to the cardstock and the construction paper to the wallpaper. for the cross stitch I used foam tape to make it stand off the card a bit.

Stitching

Started: April 6th
Finished: April 7th

Follow along on Snapchat!

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full front of Husker card

Love, Laugh, WINE

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

Follow along on Snapchat!

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Full front of card

Color the Rainbow

I may have gotten a little over confident on this one. I thought it would be extremely simple to finish in just a couple of days. Instead it took me around 2 weeks.

Most of the delay was my fault. I was studying for an exam and had to put cross stitching to the side for a couple weeks. The exam was out of town so while I was away I also wasn’t working on this.

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Once I got back I realized just how close to deadline I was. I’ve been working frantically through my last weekend before it needed to be sent trying to finish. I even worked on it while walking on the treadmill (didn’t go the greatest, but got me just a little closer).

I did finish late Sunday night getting everything assembled, photographed, and in the mail. This card is staying in town and actually not going all that far. I’m sure it will have a journey around town to get to its final destination though.

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This card is for a cousin of mine. When I saw this pattern it made me think of her. She is a teacher, but I think it was more the bright colors that drew me in.

I wanted those colors to really stand out so I chose a grey paper as my frame. I’m still not great at getting the work stretched correctly while mounting (you’ll notice it looks a little bubbled) though I did make many more attempts with this one.

I used my Cricut to cut the frame and write Happy Birthday! along the bottom. Overall I think this card turned out quite nice.

Pattern from dailycrossstitch.com.

Stitching

Started: January 13th
Finished: January 27th

Follow along on Snapchat!

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Curious Cat

The curious cat. Aren’t they all so curious and frustrating at times? I happen to have 2 of them and know all too well their mischievous ways. Little did I know that a second cousin of mine also has an affinity for these adorable creatures.

It was just finding a pattern that would be fun for a birthday card. I was able to find one in an old pattern book for afghans (blankets, not the people). I’m not sure if this was supposed to be stitched on much larger cloth, but I went with 14 count Aida for this one. This pattern is only 39 stitches high by 42 wide! So small, yet so many stitches in there.

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For the longest time the body of this cat looked like a fish to me. My niece guessed what it was very quickly on Snapchat. The flowers added a nice pop of color to this piece.

I went with all scrap thread for this one since it was so small. I figured I would be safe. I was able to match leftovers from a kit to one of my bobbins of thread I already had. They are close enough I combined them. Can you tell? It’s the one with way more thread than the rest in the picture above.

Once I got to the “framing” of this piece I went for wallpaper. I wanted something brick or at least brick-like and found this goldish heavily textured paper.

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The parts that stand out aren’t wrinkles, they are meant to be there. I wanted to try and align the top line with the rope from the basket, but it wasn’t meant to be. The Cricut isn’t the most reliable thing in the world for matching what you see on the screen to where it might cut your paper. I took a gamble and lost this one, but it still turned out ok. I did like the extra space at the bottom to put a little birthday sign.

I employed the Cricut for some drawing. The letters are drawn with a pen by the Cricut and then it cut out the square. That is mounted with foam tape to be more 3D. I really enjoy foam tape. I was lazy and didn’t find a stamp to try and fit the 3.25″ width I was cutting (to match the frame) so I used the writing feature of the Cricut instead.

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I mounted everything to white cardstock with double sided tape. The wallpaper is struggling to stick though. The backing of this wallpaper is a strange fabric weave type thing.

Stitching

 

Started: January 8th
Finished: January 13th

Follow along on Snapchat!

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Young Chef

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

Follow along on Snapchat!

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Will you be my Valentine?

So that title is a bit misleading. As this is posting the day of, I can’t get a card out that fast. I wanted to share the 3 cards I did make this year and sent out in time to reach their destinations (Colorado and Georgia). The third card was for my husband, so it didn’t have to go through the rigors of the post office!

After posting on Snapchat my newly acquired glitter glue, and asking who might want a card, my husband’s cousin responded that she did. The problem was I couldn’t think of a card to make, so I asked her what holiday or something I should do. She reminded me that Valentine’s Day was coming up. So I got started coming up with some concepts after browsing the Cricut library and not finding something I wanted.

I thought it would be fun to show my concepts for these cards I drew up on my phone (the Note 8, no icrap in this house). Anyway…I find myself telling people quite frequently that I can’t draw worth crap, what’s in my head does not translate into hand-drawn pretties.

Georgia

This is the card that made it’s way to Georgia. It’s pretty flat so I wasn’t worried about it surviving. This was also the most frustrating of the three because I wasn’t able to truly capture what was in my head.

vday allisha

First, I couldn’t find the heart ‘o’ in the fonts that I have. I could have sworn I had one, but was unable to find it and didn’t want to sort through all internet font options. But I think the teddy bear holding a heart does the trick.

Second, my sun ray type things just wouldn’t work for me. I thought I could do it, but things just didn’t translate, so it’s a bit messy for what I wanted.

Finally, the Cricut…Took me a few goes to actually realize it gives itself a margin where it won’t cut. So my card was placed right, but all the cuts are a good quarter inch to the right. I am hoping to be able to better compensate for this with future cards that have a peek through. Luckily I figured out the whole cut/draw on one mat thing so the drawing ended up where it should.

The paper background is discontinued wallpaper that has a silver sheen to it.

 

Colorado

This card I worried about so much. The button was thicker than I thought while I was picking it, and then the hot glue gun decided it wanted to create a huge glue glob.. you get the idea. I was very happy with the fact that I used some press n’ seal to get the adhesive foil up and onto the card. It took some patience, but worth it for not ruining the paper.

vday rhea

It was my first time transferring something using some sort of sticky material. My first card had all the letters connecting so I just picked it up and placed it where I wanted it. I am also happy that everything came out fairly straight.

The base of the flower I drew in Illustrator and then had the Cricut draw it with a gold pen.

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The Husband

This card took the most in terms of intricacy. I also tried my hand at drawing in Illustrator…luckily it help clean up really bad curves. This is the only card with some outside inspiration. I saw this Pin once, thought I remembered the general idea, until just now, looking at it I really didn’t do mine the same at all. What caught my eye was the overlapping hearts and Love intertwined (at least that’s how I remembered it). I wanted to recreate something like that and ended up with my own overlapping heart with the word coming off that.

vday mike

I used the same wallpaper and gold glitter glue as the piece above. I also used my new stencils to create the bottom arrows with acrylic paint that looks good with the gold theme I have going on.

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After photographing these cards I realized (when it was at least 1am) that this card was missing something. It was the glitter on the arrows. It took so much effort to go to bed and not start working on “fixing” the card that night. I was good, got some zzz’s (I think) and worked on this first thing in the morning. It helped the card so much, finally coming together to look more professional.

 

 

2018 Valentine’s Day card set

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