Tools of the Trade

What do you get when you cross a welder and a wood crafter? This card! Also you get the final card of the #cardproject2019. This has been an intense year of cross stitching for sure, but now it has come to a close. The final birthday today, December 31st.

I pulled a few tools out of a larger pattern called Grandpa’s Workshop from the May/June 1993 Cross Stitch & Country Crafts magazine. This way they would fit on a card and be relevant to his interest of wood crafting.

tools before backstitching

The saw blades were the hardest to stitch and outline. A bunch of quarter stitches all in a row is hard to do and keep consistent. I seem to have a hard time parting the fabric right in the middle to get a nice clean look. This might be something that is only noticeable to other stitchers too.

In my paper I didn’t find anything I liked much so went for my wallpaper stash. I found the paper I used first, then saw a foam wood paper that I considered for the frame. While wood seems to make more sense the tools seemed to get lost more with it, so I went with my initial thought of the silver.

Then it was deciding if I wanted to put the dark area in the middle or just the bottom. Putting it at the bottom won since it’s hard for me to line up the Cricut to cut exactly where I wanted. Getting a dark stripe right in the center would be too hard so I went with below and I think it works well.

front angle view of tools finished

The paper sample was smaller than most to begin with and my first try I didn’t measure the hole correctly. Luckily the pattern is banded so I flipped it around and tried again with more breathing room around the cross stitch. I used double sided tape to hold everything together.

Stitching

Started: November 16th
Finished: November 27th

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full front of tools card

Yellow Bird

This little bird is tiny and somehow there are 13 different colors! I couldn’t believe it as I was collecting the thread/floss for this project. I must admit it looks pretty lifelike now that it’s done, so all those color changes were worth it.

the beginning

This card is for my aunt whose birthday is today. I’m not sure on her age and feel it’s not appropriate to share anyway. She loves to photograph the birds that come to her backyard to eat and if they found a home in a birdhouse, sleep over. I am pretty sure I have seen some sort of black and yellow bird in her photos and this one made me think of her.

As you can see below this pattern came together extremely quickly, which is good because I was very much behind (and still am) on getting these done in a timely manner.

Because of the size I decided before I began this one would not be “framed” as I have done to many of the other patterns. I wanted to use my embossing machine again. I have a folder (I think that’s what those are called) with happy birthday all over it that I wanted to use. It’s similar to the Purple Morpho from last year.

 

Instead of using scrapbook paper I went with wallpaper. I did two colors and discovered that the softer less “papery” wallpaper does not emboss. I wasn’t sure how it would go and I was happy with either as the background, the silver won.

For mounting I used a small piece of grey paper foam tape mounted to the card then used some double sided tape and E-6000 for attaching the fabric to the paper.

Something I learned while studying for my CPP exam was that if you want to show texture, light from the side. So this go-round of highlighting the embossing on a card I was able to show better what it looks like.

the embossing

Stitching

Started: January 28th
Finished: January 29th

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cropped in full card view

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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