Stitch

 I made this during a few evenings before Christmas. It is a 4” hoop using a pattern from Durene Jones. The pattern says take life one stitch at a time but I only wanted the word Stitch on it so adapted it a little. I do love stitching these little pictures.

A friend saw it on my Facebook timeline and bought it so I will need to make another.

70th Birthday

This is for a very good friend of ours whose 70th Birthday was yesterday.  She doesn't like cute images but she does love gardening so I chose this Hunkydory image.  The card is 7" square and the paper is First Edition Forever Free.  I added a square doily, flowers from Wild Orchid and a butterfly from Poundland.  The leaves were cut using a Joy die.  Numbers are American Thickers.

I rarely use this many colours on a card but wanted to echo the colours in the image with my embellishments.  I think I must challenge myself to use more colours on a card as I tend to stick to two main colours.

As I made this card I realised what a long time it is since I bought from Wild Orchid.  It must be at least two years and I still have lots of their flowers. I didn't buy much craft stuff at all this year but there is still an awful lot of stuff in my craft room, like most crafters I think.

 

Merry Christmas

Wishing you all a Happy and Healthy Christmas.  I love Christmas Eve at home. A few chores this morning then enjoying the rest of the day. We have my Mum coming tomorrow so looking forward to that.  Stay safe, have fun and see you again after Christmas.

 

Deer for my dear hubby

I bought another distress oxide, salty ocean and had a play with that and chipped sapphire after stamping the large wreath.  This is an 8" square card and Graham loves it.  I added some red liquid pearls and chunky glitter.

I have really enjoyed playing more with my Card-io stamps and need to experiment more with non Christmas Card-io stamps to make some Birthday cards.

 

Christmas pudding

Another cross stitched Christmas card using a pattern from Durene Jones.  I thought my blogging friend Kate would like this one as she has a cat and a good sense of humour.  The image does make me smile.  I used some old LOTV paper, tartan of course for Kate in Scotland. I made a frame for the image and used an old Memory Box holly branch, a Woodware punch and some card candi.

 

Cross stitch meets Card-io

I have my last few Christmas cards to share with you before Christmas.  This free pattern from Durene Jones came up on Facebook a couple of weeks ago and as I have a friend who loves hedgies I just had to stitch it for her card.  I stitched it on perforated paper so I could cut him out and add him to the background.

Having used distress inks for years I am also now loving the distress oxides and used the chipped sapphire again. I also added a little black ink to the sky.  The trees were stamped in silver which came out really well I thought,  I am finding the torn paper so much easier to stamp over than using a plastic mask.  I added the foliage and some red liquid pearls.

We are not mixing very much but we are having a Christmas lunch with some friends today.  We arranged it weeks ago and there are only 6 of us in a nice airy restaurant.  

This new variant is very worrying even when you are triple jabbed as we are.  We have started taking lateral flow tests twice weekly to safeguard ourselves and others,  Stay safe everyone x

 

Discovering distress oxides

 

I made this card for some special friends. I have been watching some Youtube tutorials of Card-io stamps and looking at ideas on Pinterest. I decided to buy Chipped Sapphire distress oxide to try. I love it as I achieved just the look I wanted on this card. I used it for the sky and the snowdrifts. I also discovered that using torn paper is better than using a mask as it is easier to stamp right to the snow line. I have now bought some blending brushes and another colour distress oxide to try some blending,

I am so pleased with the way this turned out. Sometimes I have a design in mind and the card ends up nothing like I envisaged but this turned out just as I imagined. All the stamps are Card-io and I used liquid pearls for the berries, a white gel pen and glitter.

50th Birthday card

This is a commissioned card for someone whose Birthday is New Year's Day.  My friend asked for this image as she liked a previous card I made using it.  It is an old Whiff of Joy image by Elisabeth Bell which I coloured with Copics.  I haven't done much colouring lately so am looking forward to having time to do more soon.

The paper is First Edition Forever Free which was perfect as she asked for this colour scheme.  I added a doily, lace from Crafty Ribbons and lots of flowers from Wild Orchid.  I used Victorian Velvet distress ink around the image and sentiment.

 

Cross stitched snowman

Yesterday we visited my Mum and went out for a lovely Christmas lunch. Next time we see her will be Christmas Day so we exchanged Christmas cards.  I recently bought the new snowman patterns from Catkin and Lillie's Etsy shop and just had to sew one of them for Mum's card.  I remembered I have some red material and thought it would be much better for showing off the snowman.  As I started to stitch it I realised it is 16 count rather than 14 count so he came out a bit smaller than the pattern.  It was also slightly more challenging to sew that size.

I used a MFT scalloped frame, old LOTV papers, ribbon from stash snowflake banner from The Works and Marianne and Joy tree dies with some embossed card.

Oh Christmas tree

 

Well not much happening on my blog this week, I have been doing some crafting but nothing I can share at the moment. After the two craft fairs I had a big sort out of all my stock. I had just 4 Santa keys left from a couple of years ago so advertised them on Facebook groups and sold them all. It’s such a busy time of year for everyone so I do appreciate those who take time to visit and especially comment.

We got the decorations out yesterday. We bought a smaller tree last year which I love and a lot of the decorations we used are handmade, mostly by me. The latest addition I bought at a craft fair. It is on the right, a needle felted robin with a knitted hat. 

I will be back blogging again soon.