Odds and Ends

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.