Last night, when I was playing with Kaleidoscope Kreator, it occurred to me that the quilter’s star template would be perfect for spirelli. I found a photo with the colors I wanted and created a 20 point quilter’s star. I also created a couple 10 point stars so I could turn the whole thing into a Christmas ornament.
Here’s how it turned out:
I edged the stars with gold Perfect Pearls. The tassel is hand-made from the gold and lavender thread I used for the spirelli.
I’ve been playing with Spirelli lately. The other night I cut out several shapes and decided to chalk them before adding the thread. most of them I did in pretty pastels, but I chose to do this one in fall colors instead. After finishing it, it occurred to me that it just might work as tail feathers for a turkey. I was hoping I had some clip art I could use for the turkey’s head and body, but I ended up making my own. Here’s how it turned out.
Everything on this card is hand cut, including the spirelli shape. I didn’t make a pattern for the turkey, but the spirelli is from a pattern I made quite some time ago. You can download it here: http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/pdf/StringArt1.pdf
I have a bunch of partially finished projects stashed here and there and my mission this weekend was to finish at least a few of them. So, I peeked in my embroidery box and found several embroidered and spirelli pieces that need to be put on cards. All of them are at least a year old and some of them much older than that. There are a few that are just ho-hum, but I can’t bring myself to throw them out (why? I don’t know!)
One of the spirelli pieces in particular caught my eye, so I decided to start with it.
I matted it on navy blue, then I used my die cutter and Spellbinders Pendants die to cut two pendants from textured silver foil gift wrap. After mounting it all on a card, I decided the corners were too bare, so I put a piece of the foil gift wrap through my Xyron and cut it in thin strips and used that for the corners. All in all, I think it turned out OK, although I could have been a little more consistent with the width of the strips of foil.
Next, was an ornament shape I embroidered who knows when with some interesting color challenges. I wasn’t sure what to do with it until I saw the October Sketch Challenge on JustCards. That gave me just the right amount of inspiration and I pulled out my Christmas stack from DCWV looking for the appropriate papers. The yellow stitching still looks a bit out of place, nevertheless this, I think is one of my all time favorites.
After that, the next one was easy. Same idea, but all in blue. I think I’ll call it “Blue Christmas.”
Wish I’d noticed how off-center that middle stripe was before I made it permanent, but hey, it’s handmade, it’s not supposed to be perfect, right?
You can find the embroidery patterns for the last two cards on my website at http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/embrinst.php.
That’s it for tonight. I have several more to make, but I probably won’t be able to do much tomorrow because my son’s family is coming over. If I do any crafting at all I will be helping my four-year-old granddaughter run scraps through my Cuttlebug. She loves doing that and we usually end up with a pile of pink teddy bears.
After figuring out and writing up the tea bag folding instructions for the Open Center Star, I ended up with three completed medallions that I needed to do something with. I wanted to mat them and put them on a shiny background, but didn’t have any paper I liked, so I started rummaging through my gift wrap collection and found several rolls of metallic paper in various colors. Perfect!
Next, I glued the gift wrap to some medium weight card stock, got out my Cuttlebug and embossed it. I am very happy with the results and it cost a fraction of what it would have if I had run out and bought the “right” stuff. Yes, I know, it’s not acid free, but I’m using it to make Christmas cards and I don’t think any of them will be saved for long. I would not do this for photos.
I used silver for the next card…
… and red for the last one.
I have a few more colors to try, so you’ll probably be seeing them here sometime in the near future.
I’ve been working on updating my website and I came across a tea bag fold card I made quite some time ago but I never got around to writing the instructions. I remember when I made the card that I wanted a fold that would show the picture on the tile, but I couldn’t find a fold I liked. After playing around a bit, I came up with my own. It’s fairly simple, so I’m sure someone else has probably done the same thing. After all, there are only so many ways to fold a square piece of paper. Here’s the result:
Of course, in order to write down the instructions, I had to figure out the fold all over again. Fortunately it is an easy fold! Here’s a link to the instructions:
http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/ocstar.php
Here are a couple more medallions I made while figuring it out:
I thought the flip side of this one looked interesting as well. It looks like it was made with completely different tiles:
I didn’t have much time this evening for crafting, but I’m going to be away this weekend so I knew if I didn’t make something tonight, I probably wouldn’t get anything done for another week. So I turned to my clip art collection, which is mostly from PcCrafter. I quickly located a very cute Christmas Sampler collection by Laurie Furnell, one of my favorite artists. I printed a few images on white card stock, then cut them out with my oval cutting template (Coluzzle).
The first one I finished was this snowman.
I found some cute background papers for the snowman in the Christmas Stack from DCWV as well as metallic card stock in the Metallic Stack from DCWV. I used decorative scissors to cut the wavy border in the background.
Next, I chose a skinny little Christmas tree that reminded me a little of a Charlie Brown tree.
I cut a gold border for it using my oval cutter. Next, I printed “Oh Christmas Tree” using the pc Catch a Star font from PcCrafter. The corners seemed a little bare, so I used one of my corner punches to punch corner decorations.
Here is another card I created based on the September sketch from CraftMad. This time I used the Nestabilities Scalloped Square and Blossom Two dies.
I wanted to make a Christmas card from non-traditional colors, so I chose some card stock that is purple on one side and pink on the other. I am pretty sure it is from Making Memories, but I have had it forever, so I don’t know if you can still get it or not.
After embossing the die cuts, I wrapped them with silver embroidery floss. The center of the blossom looked rather empty, so I added a snowflake and a pink rhinestone.
I don’t know about you, but I certainly get my share of junk mail. it seems like such a waste. All that paper that goes straight from my mailbox to the recycle bin. Well, today I decided to put some of it to good use and make a card.
I used my Shapeabilities Pendants die to cut the square shapes and my Nestabilities Blossom Two template to cut the flowers. The die cuts are all from junk mail. The backgrounds are not.
The card is based on a sketch challenge from www.CraftMad.com.au.
One of the things I have been trying to do with my website redesign is update the descriptions and instructions for my cards. Last night I was looking at my Embroidered Eight Point Star and trying to remember how I stitched it well enough to write instructions. I decided it would be easiest just to make another card and while I was at it, it might as well be a Christmas card.
I chose the colors based on a beautiful variegated poinsettia my sister and I bought for our mother last year, then I found the perfect background paper in the Christmas Stack from DCWV.
The whole thing took about 2 hours start to finish even with my lousy eyesight. If you’d like to try one of your own, you can find the pattern and instructions here: http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/card.php?card_id=00182.
Happy Stitching!
I found some time this evening to make another lantern (no pencil lines this time!). These go together fairly quickly. This time, I added the flowers and butterfly before putting the lamp together and it was much easier.
Here’s the front…
… and the back.
Today, I finally found some time to play with my new mini lantern template from Hot Off The Press. They are so adorable! This is my first one, complete with pencil marks – I’ll be more careful next time!
I made it with handmade paper. The butterfly is layered gold foil and pink scrapbook paper. I really like the way it turned out. There are six lantern templates in all. I think they would make very cute Christmas ornaments.
On a completely different topic, In case you’ve been curious regarding where I’ve been for the past month and a half, I just finished a complete re-write of my website. So, if you haven’t visited for a while, take a look and let me know what you think. You can find it at http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com.
I made this card for my niece’s birthday. I made the purse with Paper Wishes’ Pretty Little Purses template. There are four purses on the template and they are adorable! I put some money inside the purse. It was a real hit with my niece.
The dress is a die-cut I received in a swap several years ago. The shoes are paper-pieced based on a shoe from PCCrafter’s Club Diva collection.
Well, I did it. I was so impressed with the templates from Paper Wishes that I joined the template personal shopper club. My first template was this adorable ice cream sundae and it arrived just in time form my nephew’s birthday.
Along with the template, I received some very nice paper as well as a newsletter with suggestions. The sparkly brown paper I used to make the ice cream came in the kit. It also included some beautiful foils and some pink swirl paper, but since I was making this for my nephew, I opted for some blue paper I already had. The whole thing went together surprisingly fast and is cute as can be. The ice cream opens up to reveal a small surprise --in this case, money, but you could also put in a small piece of jewelry or perhaps some chocolate.
I recently bought some new stamps at Joanne’s and decided to use them on this birthday card for my daughter-in-law. The outer border stamp is from Heidi Grace Designs and the “happy birthday” and circle are from Inkadinkadoo.
After stamping and embossing the circle, I cut it out and mounted it using foam squares to make a raised frame.
The punches I used for the flowers and leaves are as follows:
I used 1/8” and 1/4” embossing tools to shape the leaves and flower petals.
Here’s a sympathy card I made recently. It was one of my first attempts with perfect pearls and I had to re-do the stamped part 3 times before I got it right. In spite of that, I really do like Perfect Pearls. I’m sure I will be using it a lot on future projects.
The flowers were made with several different punches. I used an embossing tool to shape the petals. Punch flowers are some of my favorite things to make.
I have been eyeing the Fold-it card templates from Paper Wishes for quite some time, so when I saw the spiral template on sale for $1 I snapped it up right away. I wasn’t sure how I would like the template because it seemed like there was a lot of tracing and cutting involved, but it turned out to be quite easy to use.
Here is my first card.
I made it for my niece’s graduation. Inside, I put a verse from the Bible on each of the petals and an inspirational poem in the middle. Of all of the giant fold-it templates, I think this one has the most room in the center for writing.
The template also comes with a pattern for a small spiral, plus templates for tags and decorative dots and swirls. I know I will be using this one quite a bit!
My youngest nephew graduated from high school this year. How time flies! Cards for guys have always been a struggle for me, so I turned to the May issue of Cardmaker magazine for some inspiration and found the perfect pattern. The only problem was that I didn’t have the die cuts for the diploma or the graduation hat, nor did I have the stamp for the wording.
What to do? Make my own templates, of course! I wanted the graduation hat and the diploma to be embossed, so using a coffee can lid, I created my own embossing stencils. It was really pretty easy as the plastic cuts very easily with an X-acto knife. Just draw the design and cut it out. Here’s my stencil.
The only marginally tricky part was the swirl on the end of the diploma.
I used my cuttlebug to emboss the cap (Plate A + plate B + stencil + paper + 2 Nestabilities embossing pads + plate B). It turned out really well. I finished it off by adding a black brad and a tassle, which I made from black, orange and gold embroidery floss.
The diploma didn’t emboss well in the cuttlebug. The paper kept tearing around the swirl, so I used an embossing tool instead. I finished it off with a gold outline (sorry, I didn’t get a good picture of that).
Next came the wording. I found a font that I liked and created it on my computer. Next, I printed it out and then put it on my light box so I could trace it onto some off-white paper. This is a tricky way to make people think I can actually write well. :)
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the results.
My oldest granddaughter just turned four. It is hard to believe how fast she is growing up! Her birthday was just a few days before Easter, so I added a cute little bunny to her card.
The die for this bunny came in a Sizzlits four pack set which also includes a bear, a lamb and a lion. They are all adorable. The lace is made from a strip of vellum that I punched using a Fiskars floral border punch and the number 4 was cut using a Coluzzle shadow-shapes template.
I made this card for my best friend’s birthday. I used my Sizzlits garden set and my Sizzix flower pot die to make the die cuts.
I used distress ink to make the gloves look used and punched some flowers to add to the flower pot.
I made this card for a co-worker who recently suffered a stroke. One of his favorite pastimes is square dancing, so I wanted to make a card with a square dance theme.
I searched high and low and finally found some clip art of a square dancing couple that I could paper piece. I enlarged it and printed it out, then used my light box to trace the pieces onto patterned scrapbook paper. I’m lousy at drawing faces, so I just left the woman’s face blank.
Last week one of my co-workers asked me if I could make a thank-you card for a woman at his church who is moving away. He wanted a quilt theme since she likes to sew and quilt.
I decided that I wanted to do something with iris folding, so I went in search of some quilt block patterns and found one called Day and Night that I really like. Here’s my finished card.
While this isn’t quite iris folding, the technique is pretty much the same. The hardest part is getting the diagonal folds exact. This is definitely one where you want to use a bone folder or other scoring tool to score and crease the folds.
I did the stamping and embossing before the iris folding as the heat from a heat gun can ruin some papers and could also melt the tape. The clip art is from pcCrafter’s Crafty Kitten collection. It is in 3D and I added embroidery floss where the thread comes off of the spools. Here is a closer look.
You can find the Night and Day pattern and instructions on my website at http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/irisfoldinst.php
